Manatee County School Board attends joint board meeting to discuss 2016 goals

Only meeting once a year gave members of the Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties' school boards plenty to talk about when they converged Jan. 20.

Board members took turns breaking down their priorities for 2016.

They also compared those ideas with the Florida School Board Association's Legislative Platform, which included stopping the use of standardized testing for purposes other than diagnostic and restoring the authority for school districts to levy up to 2.0 mills for capital projects.

"When we lost the ability to raise the mill up to 2.0, it was a financial loss of about $113 million for the district," Manatee County School Board member Bob Gause said. "That's a high school and almost an elementary school worth of money we could have had."

As part of its initiatives for this year, the board hopes to help persuade the legislature to return authority back to local school districts to increase the millage rate up to 2.0.

The district will need the extra revenue if it plans to construct new schools over the next five years.

Another focus of the Manatee board's to-do list is expanding voluntary pre-kindergarten implementation, which means the district hopes to offer schooling to children ages 2 and 3.

Allowing children to start learning in school at an earlier age will help reduce costs of remediating students later in their k-12 years, board members agreed.

Sarasota County School Board priorities included funding tuition, instructional materials and administrative fees to state and community colleges and universities for dual enrollment.

The boards plan to meet again in late summer or fall to discuss their progress on meeting their goals.