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Aug 31, 2007 9:57 am US/Eastern
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Dade Schools Face Program Cuts To Offset Budget
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MIAMI (CBS4) ―
The Miami-Dade School District took nearly $30 million from emergency reserves as tax revenues dipped. It spent more on energy costs, the hiring of more teachers and others expenses.
The district's operating budget for the fiscal year that ended June 30 was $3.1 billion.
In order to make up the money, according to a Friday story published in
The Miami Herald, the district plans to slash summer reading programs and cut back on money now budgeted to help students impove in the district's lowest-performing schools. Programs to help students study for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test also will be cut to replenish reserves.
The district had fewer students than anticipated, resulting in $5 million less in funding from the state, while property taxes generated $13 million less than expected, a school official told the newspaper. The district also under budgeted what it would spend on hiring new teachers by $18 million, and energy costs were $6 million higher than anticipated.
Overall, the district's budget was off by $46.4 million from its February projections, a 1.5 percent increase in spending.
Superintendent Rudy Crew has said he would use the contingency fund to offset budget cuts of between 2 percent and 5 percent that state lawmakers are expected to mandate next month. That could create a $95 million hole for the district.
Several board members expressed concern about the cost overruns, which they learned about only when the district released its end-of-the-year budget report this week.
Florida law mandates that school districts operate in the black, and generally accepted accounting practices recommend that school districts maintain a 5 percent reserve, about $150 million in Miami-Dade.
((© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this repo)