5) Reduce Class Size Amendment -- requires the State to build enough classrooms so that, by the beginning of the 2010 school year, limits on the maximum number of students per class can be attained. The limits are 18 students for Pre-K to grade 3, 22 students for grades 4 through 8 and 25 students for grades 9 through12.
Floridians, vote NO in November!
The Estimating Conference did not put dollar amounts on the first three amendments. It determined the animal cruelty amendment had no significant impact for state or local governments. The fiscal impacts of the university governance and drug treatment amendments were deemed indeterminate.
The estimators put an annual cost of between $425 million and $650 million (in today's dollars) on the pre-K education amendment. The range is dependent on the extent to which existing school readiness funding is used.
The big-ticket item is the class size amendment. It is estimated that 30,000 more classrooms would need to be built and 31,000 more teachers hired between 2004 and 2010. The cumulative cost over this period was estimated at between $20 billion and $27.5 billion. This range is dependent on how the Legislature would choose to add capacity, building new schools or using portables. Once implemented, the new system would cost an extra $2.5 billion annually (in today's dollars.)
Currently, the state spends approximately $16 billion on education. According to the Florida School Indicators Report 2000-2001, the statewide average class size in elementary school is 23.3 and middle school, and high school varies by subject: from 24.8 to 27.8.
Unlike the normal Consensus Estimating Conference, the process for initiatives does not require a consensus of every member of the conference. A majority of the four members is sufficient. This issue came into play during this first conference when one of the members voted against the class size fiscal impact statement because he felt that including the cumulative cost would confuse voters.