Classrooms are the highest priority as school district prepares 2025-26 budget

As Sarasota County school district officials cite difficulties like rising class sizes and less state and federal funding, they are working to balance those realities to deliver a top-notch learning experience as the budget cycle approaches for the 2025 to 2026 school year. 

Bonnie Penner, chief financial officer of Sarasota County Schools, said when prioritization is necessary, the focus is always on the essentials of students' education. 

“Always, always, first and foremost is the classroom, making sure that at a minimum, we're meeting class size,” Penner said.

During a June 17 school board workshop, Penner said the proposed $748 million budget will include board-approved raises for teachers, as well as additional costs for the new Skye Ranch School.

While noting the district's focus on classrooms, Penner said nonetheless, it is examining which positions it is possible to leave vacant, while still allowing the district to adhere more closely to class-size limits.

In the past, it has tended to keep class sizes below the state limits, which are 18 students in prekindergarten through third grade, 22 students in 4-8, and 25 students in 9-12. 

"The cuts to our federal funding and our state funding we cannot fully absorb in the district's budget," said Sarasota School Board Member Liz Barker. "It's just not possible, but we will do everything in our power to protect the sanctity of the classroom."

Barker says the district has the best outcomes when it keeps class sizes as small as possible.

"I've advocated with the superintendent, that I think that particularly our kindergarten classrooms, and I think to some extent, even our first-grade classrooms, we need to be particularly diligent about keeping those sizes small, because kindergartners, they're not just there to learn to read and write, they really need so much help beyond that," she said.

She said most of those classrooms have one teacher, and students may need help with needs like fine motor skills, tying their shoes, zipping their coat, or using the restroom.

"Where we may have worked really hard to keep our class sizes closer to 17 or 18 in those upper grades, fourth grade through eighth grade, we may have to bump those sizes up to be closer to the state standard, which is 22, and that will mean that it's a lot more work for teachers, and it will mean less specialized instruction for students," she said. 

That can also mean there are no county plans to hire more teachers as class sizes grow.

In June, the district implemented a hiring freeze to control costs. 

Penner said the district is also looking at operational efficiencies, enhancing the use of grant resources, restrictions on nonessential travel, and examining contracts, licenses and overtime.

Despite these challenges, Penner noted that the preliminary budget still ends with a fund balance of 9%, higher than the 7.5% requested by the school board’s policy.

Another area where Penner has said the budgeting process is closely focused is the Literacy for All program. 

The initiative was implemented by Superintendent Terry Connor in 2024, and was designed to individualize the reading instruction provided to students beyond what the former Reading Recovery program had offered, expanding literacy coaching and intervention and bringing them to all of the district's schools. 

“It would be very difficult for you to find middle and high schools that have literacy coaches," Deputy Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer Rachael O'Dea told the Observer in 2024. "That's a very different approach, and we're probably one of the few in the state to have that at scale."

The district also will need to manage the costs of the new Skye Ranch School, which opens in August.

The new K-8 facility, located at Clark and Lorraine Road, will begin serving students up to sixth grade, with seventh grade to come in 2026 and eighth grade in 2027.

In 2024, the school board voted unanimously to set a new boundary that will relocate 1,187 students from Ashton Elementary, Lakeview Elementary and Sarasota Middle School to the new school, which contains 1,382 student stations.

Penner told the Observer in June that the current team overseeing the budget, introduced under Connor in 2023, is "very well-resourced."

She says the process of creating the budget involves working closely with other areas of the district.

"I meet with Mr. Connor once a week, meet with my budget team frequently, to see where we're going with that, but also cabinet is very involved," she said. 

Penner will speak with schools about what their enrollment historically has been, and will involve the planning department, speaking about new neighborhoods coming in and other factors that may impact enrollment.

“This whole process really has a lot of input from the superintendent and the full cabinet, so they can see, not just here's the strategic plan of where we want to go, but also each step of the way, this is how it's going to impact it,” she said.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the number of counties in Florida.