- July 29, 2026
The Flagler County School Board adopted a tentative budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year of $353,097,566 on July 28. It also adopted a tentative total millage rate of 5.312, or about $5.31 of taxable property value.
The good news for the school district is it finished the 2025-26 fiscal year with an estimated $8 million general fund balance. The bad news is that in order to balance the 2026-27 budget, it will need to use $2 million of that ending fund balance.
The reasons for this, Flagler Schools Chief Financial Officer Patty Wormeck said, include about a $2.5 million increase in school voucher distributions, a $1 million state mandate for the Teacher Salary Increase Allocation and cost increases for text books and utilities.
The district plans to make up that $2 million out of the 2026-27 budget, Superintendent LaShakia Moore said at a July 21 budget presentation. The first step, she said, is using attrition for non-classroom instructional personnel. Salaries and benefits make up 83% of general fund expenditures.
Open positions outside of the classroom will only be filled on a case-by-case basis, Moore said. They may centralize some positions, she said. All departments will also submit budgets reduced by up to 4%, she added.
“It’s definitely concerning and something we will have to address,” Moore said. “It is our intention to balance this $2 million out.”
An $8 million fund balance would be in the district’s desired range of 5.5% to 6% of general fund revenue in case an emergency situation arises.
This past year insurance claims were $4 million higher than the previous year. An estimated total of 2,473 Flagler County students have accepted vouchers for private or home schooling totaling $17,329,690, according to the state’s second 2026-27 calculation. That is up from 1,926 students totaling $14,913,258, according to the 2025-26 fourth calculation.
While, the voucher increase is for about 547 students, district enrollment is down by about 160 students, which indicates that most of the vouchers are still going to students who have never been enrolled in Flagler Schools, Moore said.
The district’s tentative Required Local Effort millage rate, dictated by the state, decreased for the 12th straight year to 3.064. The capital outlay millage of 1.500 and discretionary operating millage of 0.7480 remained the same. the proposed total amount to be raised is $109,357,903.
