| gr8flaglerschools.com is dedicated to providing current and important information about the Flagler County School District and our schools. 
Recent News From Flagler County And Around The State:
2011 Florida Education News:  A Key Florida House Committee Approves Putting One Million Back Into Public Schools - 1/25/12
A "Parent Trigger" Law Has the Potential to Backfire in Florida Schools - 1/25/12 Latest Flagler School District News: 2012-13 School Calendar Proposed With August 20th Start Date - 1/31/12 Flagler Schools "Uniform Dress Code" Policy Takes Shape - 1/25/12 Flagler School Board Votes To Adopt A "Uniform" Policy, But Don't Know What That Means - 1/18/12 Flagler School District Highlights: Flagler Schools Get an "A" Grade For The 4th Year in a Row! - 6/30/11 Flagler Elementary and Middle School Grades Released - 6/30/11 Flagler Ties for 2nd Among All Florida District in New Algebra 1 End-of-Course Exam - 6/8/11 FCAT Writing Results - Scores Up Across the District - 5/6/11 Flagler County School District Awarded "AP District of the Year" - 4/5/2011
Elected Officials Contact Information: Updated: 2/7/11 State Representative Costello - District 26 State Representative Proctor - District 20 State Senator Hill - District 1 State Senator Thrasher - District 8 Congressional Representative Mica - District 7 U.S. Senator Graham U.S. Senator Rubio
Past Top Stories:
November 3, 2010 John Fischer Wins Seat On Flagler School Board John Fischer, a Palm Coast resident and insurance agent for Knights of Columbus, handily defeated attorney Raven Sword for the District 5 seat on the Flagler County School Board. Fischer, 65, recieved 58 percent of the vote to Ms. Sword's 42%. Mr. Fischer replaces board Chairwoman Evie Shellenberger, who did not seek re-election. Don’t miss the 4th Annual Flagler Schools College Fair! This is an event planned and organized by the students…..for all Flagler County students!
When: Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Time: Evening 6:00 – 8:00 pm – parents and students
Where: Matanzas High School - Gymnasium
To help promote the college fair, Matanzas web design students created a web page that will connect you to college fair information and a list of all confirmed universities. From this single webpage, a student can click on University of Florida, for example, and be directed to the university's webpage. Last year 110 universities attended our event! See this year’s list of colleges!
A list of October events, including the 2010 Flagler Schools College Fair, can be found HERE.
 June 26, 2010 School Board Meeting Moved from July 6th to June 30th Normally, the Flagler School Board holds their meetings on the first and third Tuesday of each month, and typically at 6:00 PM. However, the first meeting in July is sometimes moved to June 30th to accommodate the need for a Board Meeting on this date to accommodate the close out of the 2009-10 budget. Please note the new date for the next school board meeting, Wednesday, June 30th at 6:00 PM March 29, 2010 Arbor Day Celebration in Town Center!
Plan now to attend the City of Palm Coast’s Arbor Day Celebration to be held at Central Park in Town Center on Saturday, May 8th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The best part is that you will have a chance to DUNK me at the Rotary Club Dunk Tank! Take your best shot! Donations are $3.00 for 3 throws and $5.00 for 10 throws. All proceeds will go to Rotary Internationals “Polio Plus” campaign to eradicate polio from the four countries in the world where this dreaded disease still exists (Afganistan, Pakistan, Ethopia and India). Also, please stop by the Andrew S. Dance & Associates booth to talk about anything you want! Thank you for your support! Andy March 2, 2010
The 2010 Florida Budget Shell Game Charlie Crist proposed a state budget earlier this month, stating "Right now, no more cuts to education. I mean we all know how important education is, especially when we are having a tough economy. We have recommended to the Florida House and Senate an increase in education. We can afford it if done responsibly. I believe we will get it done." The problem with this scenario is that nobody else in Tallahasee shares this optimism. Northeast Florida legislators are not convinced, and Senator John Thrasher (see picture, above) shared this opinion during his workshop in Flagler County last week. The problem is that the lackluster economy leaves a $3 billion deficit in the budget for next year. The governor is counting on federal Medicaid stimulus money and a $433 million gaming pact with the Seminole Indian Tribe to close the gap. But approval of that deal by lawmakers is far from certain. To many northeast Florida school officials, the governor's budget is fantasy and once again, local school districts will be left short. The Florida School Board Association is already telling all school boards to plan on a 6% reduction in state revenue this coming year. With the legislature convening today, the tough choices begin. February 12, 2010 Superintendent Bill Delbrugge Stepping Down for New Opportunity in the Middle East Superintendent Bill Delbrugge announced Thursday via a podcast to the Flagler County School district staff that he has submitted his letter of resignation to School Board Chair Evie Shellenberger. Delbrugge stated in his announcement that he loves working for the Flagler County School District, and would not be leaving if not for this "once in a lifetime" opportunity to start a school district from the ground up in a socially and educationally disadvantaged part of the world. Delbrugge sees this as an opportunity to stabilize an unstable segment of the world through education. Personally, I am saddened that Bill is leaving Flagler County Schools. In my experience with Bill, he was a genuine, honest and hard working superintendent who demanded the best out of his employees. Bill always had words of encouragement and his optimism was contagious! Bill has set a high standard for future Superintendents of Flagler County Schools. The District has achieved new heights under his leadership, including the designation in 2008-09 as the only school district in Florida with all traditional public school rated an "A". The district continues to be an "A" rated district, and also achieved the designation last year as a "high performing" school district. It has been an honor and a privilege to have worked alongside Bill. He leaves big shoes to fill. Let's all wish him happiness and success in his future endeavor.
December 11, 2009Inaugural "Feed Flagler" A Success! The inaugural "Feed Flagler", a community wide effort launched by Flagler County, was a big success! Although the crowd that attended the food service at Buddy Taylor Middle School was smaller than expected, the volunteers boxed up enough "to go" meals to meet the original goal of feeding 2,000 hungry folks in Flagler County. A total 100 turkeys, 50 hams and cases of vegetables were cooked. Additionally, more than $6,000 in additional funds went to two local food banks. Congratulations to all the sponsors and volunteers for their generosity! Read more about this event from the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce: LINK September 22, 2009Flagler Designated as "Academically High-Performing District" The Florida Board of Education granted academically high-performing status to 21 of the state's 67 school districts. The Flagler County School District made the list for the first time. Read more about this in "Latest District News". Gr8FlaglerSchools.com Outage Gr8FlaglerSchools.com experienced technical errors from our website host, 1and1.com that prohibited us from updating or adding any new content over the past 5 weeks. We apologize for the lack of news and updates, and we thank you for your patience as we worked through this issue with our website provider. This was a very frustrating experience. Our recommendation is to thoroughly research your potential website host through the BBB or even via a Google search before investing in a website host and provider. August 4, 2009 Flagler County Schools Start August 24th! Summer recess is nearing its end, and many parents are getting ready for a new year of school! In order to help parents have a smooth "start of school" transition, gr8flaglerschools.com created a new webpage to help get the important information out to the parents. Just click on the link in the upper-right corner called "2009-10 School Year". If you have any news to share, please email us at info@gr8flaglerschools.com.
July 5, 2009Happy 4th of July!
It was another great 4th of July in Flagler Beach! As always, the parade was fantastic! I was happy to participate in the dunk tank to help raise money for the Flagler Beach Chamber and the Flagler Beach Historical Museum.If this is your first visit to the website, thanks for stopping by! Please browse the different pages (District News, Call to Action, Community News, etc.) and let me know what you think.
Andy
June 16, 2009
Welcome WNZF radio listeners! Thanks for taking the time to visit gr8flaglerschools.com! Please take some time to review all the different pages. I would like to hear from you, so please send me an email and tell me what you think about the website and what you would like me to add to the site. Send your comments to me at info@gr8flaglerschools.com. Thanks for visiting! Andy
Fabulous 4th at the Beach! It is time to plan for the Fabulous 4th activites at Flagler Beach. Click here for more details.
May 10, 2009 SENATE & HOUSE PASS BUDGET: The state budget has been passed, and again the legislators are touting a 1.5% increase in per student funding. However, problems with the budget persist. The federal stimulus funds only last two years, after which they go away. If the state's economy has not bounced back in two years, the school district will have to go into its reserves to make up the money that the federal stimulus funds had been covering. In support of this scenario Florida Tax Watch, an independent watchdog organization, has said that while "technically" the budget slightly increased per pupil spending for K-12 grades, in fact funding is down. Because of various cuts the state made during the school year, the new per student spending statewide is lower than the amount originally adopted in the last budget. Finally, the odds are great that the budget estimate is once again off, and that the district will face mid-year budget reductions. Falling property values and drops in sales tax revenue could mean the state wouldn't get as much as expected. If the estimates are wrong, the Legislature will have to return to Tallahassee to ensure a balanced budget, as they did last year. The district must continue to build reserves and stretch every dollar. Latest Education Budget News: April 22 2009
STATE FINALLY APPLIES FOR EDUCATION STIMULUS FUNDS: Gov. Crist and Education Commissioner Eric Smith have applied for the 2 billion in education stimulus funds for Florida. This is good news for the school districts around Florida, as the legislature's education budgets rely heavily on these funds.
For Flagler County schools, the early estimate is that stimulus funds will make up approximately 16% of our revenue for 2009-10. Even with this funding, Flagler's budget will be +/- 6% less than the current 2008-09 budget. Read More...
April 22 2009 LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Curently, no Conference Committee meetings have been held, and it is unclear when those meetings may begin. These meeting cannot begin until the House and Senate come to agreement on the total funding available for appropriations. This creates a hurdle because the total Senate budget provides about $65.6 billion in total appropriations while the House budget provides about $65.1 billion.
At the opening of today’ s House Session, Speaker Crutel announced that the House would be willing to consider supporting nearly all of the proposals for additional revenues contained in the Senate budget if the Senate would agree to support nearly all spending reductions proposed by the House. April 9, 2009
Legislators are taking a short break for Easter and will return on Monday, April 13th. When lawmakers return Monday, they will finish a few budget-related bills and steer the conflicting House and Senate versions of the package into a joint committee for negotiations in the final three weeks of the 60-day session. More on Florida's education budget news.
Locally, Flagler County hosted a town hall meeting with United States Senator Bill Nelson on Thursday in the Flagler County Board of County Commissioners Chambers. Senator Nelson heard from various members of our local government and school board and answered questions from the audience. MORE
April 2, 2009 After back-to-back years of cuts to schools, lawmakers have figured out a way to hold per-student funding steady. But it comes at the expense of other programs that historically have been funded outside the per-student funding allocation. Programs outside the formula for student spending, such as mentoring and teacher development, would take cuts up to 20 percent. But what has drawn some of the loudest opposition from Democrats is the way Republicans in the House have proposed rewriting the formula. Per-student funding actually increases slightly over last year, from $6,860.36 to $6,890.46, but it would include money that wasn't previously wasn't part of the formula. Putting money for transportation and instructional materials into the per-student formula is meant to give districts more flexibility, Republican leaders say, which they requested. The numbers just don’t add up, and in the end, the net reduction could be between 3% – 4%. There's a lot of work to be done in the coming weeks to get House and Senate proposals together, on the funding and the policy ideas. But the bottom line is not as scary as everyone expected.
April 1, 2009 The news from Tallahassee is moving quickly, and a lot of the news sources are publishing catchy headlines without investigating the details. The devil is always in the details. Last week the news was glowing for the Senate budget that minimized education cuts and included revenue from new sources. However, the proposal was heavy in revenue that the House was opposed to. All in all, last week was full of optimism! This week, the House released its preliminary budget, and again the headlines are touting the stable "per student" funding in the budget. As expected, this budget does not include money from gambling, something the Senat budget DID include. However, it DOES include stimulus funding, which was a big step for the House! The House budget retains "per-student" funding by moving money from other categories into the "per-student" category, so in reality the per-student dollars are overly inflated, and can not be compared to prior year allocations. The main way House lawmakers show per-student gains is by shifting things that the state traditionally pays 100 percent of the costs for – instructional materials, transportation for students and teacher training – into the state’s school-finance program, which means the state and local districts would split the costs. The state would also "transfer" a sliver of the local property tax revenues school districts devote to construction into direct classroom aid. More information about how these budgets affect Flagler County schools will be revealed as we dig into this some more. Please stay tuned to gr8flagler.com for the latest. Below are some headlines that expose more light into the current Senate and House budgets.Articles of Interest on Florida's Education Funding Crisis: 
Latest Flagler County District News: "Rally In Tally" - 3/19/09; updated with new pictures!
September 22, 2010 |