David Vosloh is a man on a mission.

The Foley resident recently served as chairman of the Finance subcommittee for the Baldwin County Community Action Task Force, which gave recommendations to the school board for ways the system could continue to thrive and improve.

Serving on the Finance subcommittee gave Vosloh a unique insight into the way Baldwin County’s schools are funded, and he is happy to explain to anyone around the county about the situation our schools are in.

“I’m not trying to show any doomsday scenarios, but I do think people need to know exactly what state our school system is in now and what we could face in the future if we don’t get some of these upcoming tax renewals,” Vosloh said.

To that end, Vosloh stopped by the Gulf Coast Media office in Foley last week along with Baldwin County Schools Chief Financial Officer John Wilson and Baldwin County Board of Education candidate JaNay Dawson to give a presentation on the system’s finances.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Baldwin County is the 14th fastest growing county in the country and with that growth, it has averaged an additional 517 more students each September than the year before.

“However, the last new school built was Fairhope Elementary back in 2009,” Vosloh said. “We’re dealing with this growth through the use of portables and creative usage of existing space, but there are still crowding issues in some schools.”

Vosloh pointed to Foley Elementary as an example. The school was built to hold 1,200 kindergarten through sixth grade students, but currently has 1,400 kindergarten through fourth grade students.

“Because of the tremendous growth, we could end up with 1,600 students in that school within a few years,” Vosloh said.

Vosloh said the committee’s findings showed that Baldwin County’s growth cycle requires the construction of four new elementary schools, two new middle schools and one new high school every seven or eight years just to try to keep up with our expanding enrollment.

“But there are no funds for new school construction,” Vosloh said. “The money just isn’t there, so the crowding effects just keeps getting worse and worse.”

Vosloh explained there is a fund for low cost capital projects that contains around $6 to $7 million per year, but those funds are also a needed reserve in case of disasters like severe weather events like hurricanes, or if a school was to catch fire.

When asked by local residents about why the system can’t use more local funds to help build more schools, Vosloh said his subcommittee found that the nearly $144 million that would be generated in local funds was already being allocated to other needs across the system.

Required expenditures like the 10 mill property match ($37 million) and debt service ($16.6 million) took up nearly $53.6 million of locally generated funds.

For the more than $70 million in discretionary expenditures, 27 percent of the remaining funds are used to employ needed personnel, at a cost of $34.2 million. Purchased services like insurance on the schools and utility payments cost another $24 million.

Materials and supplies like janitorial equipment and parts for the bus shop cost around $5.9 million annually, and the previously mentioned capital projects reserve of $7 million also comes from these funds.

These local funds are generated from both the 12 mills Baldwin County currently has, as well as the penny sales tax, but the system’s current millage faces a renewal vote in the March 1 primary. The penny sales tax is set to expire in May 2018.

Vosloh said the penny sales tax has become a great tool to help the system continue to employ needed personnel.

“There are 151 teachers that are currently being funded by those sales tax revenues,” Vosloh said. “Those funds also help employ 27 teacher aides, 72 bus drivers and 18 counselors, as well as other support personnel that help make sure the county’s children are getting the education and services they need.”

Even with those sales tax funds helping to pay for needed employees, Baldwin County’s schools are still doing more with less, as the county’s students have grown from almost 27,000 in 2007 to nearly 31,000 for this school year, while the number of school employees has dropped from nearly 4,200 in 2007 to a little under 3,700 for the current year.

Baldwin County is currently ranked 98 out of 135 school systems in Alabama in terms of amount spent per student, spending $8,512 per pupil — while the state average is $8,959.

Underfunding from the state level has continued to be an issue, as the state mandated Baldwin County spend $180.2 million in 2016, but only sent $143.3 million in state funds.

“We’re directed to spend almost $40 million more than what we’re given, which is where local funding mechanisms like additional millage or the penny tax come into play,” Wilson said.

The two additional mills of property tax the county generates currently are strictly funds that are used locally, so they go directly into the county’s schools and classrooms, while 61 of the other 71 funding sources are pre-earmarked for specific programs or uses.

“All of that money stays directly in Baldwin County,” Dawson said. “Of the money Baldwin County receives, those funds have the most local control and can be put where they are most desperately needed.”

While the group did not want to deal in worst case scenario hypothetical situations, all said that if the renewal of the county’s current millage fails in the March 1 vote, school board members and officials will have some incredibly tough choices to make in terms of cutting the system’s budget.

“It would be something similar to what we saw back in 2008,” Dawson, who served in the schools system administration at the time, said. “Revenues were down, so we had to cut whatever we could for the school system to continue to run. It meant laying off employees and sometimes even families, much larger class sizes, cutting 20 to 30 bus routes and even closing schools like the K-1 Center in Fairhope.”

Dawson said she hopes the voters of Baldwin County will vote to renew the current millage in March.

“At this point, the most significant thing is that I feel we need to reinstate the renewals just to keep the system where it is right now,” Dawson said. “To not do that could lead the board and school officials to have to make some difficult and possibly devastating decisions.”

Vosloh said he and others on the task force have been traveling around the county to various clubs and organizations to try to present the real facts about the schools’ current situation, and added he would be glad to be contacted to speak to any organization that would have him.

“Before the people in this county vote on March 1, we want them to have a real idea about where the system is currently and what not renewing our current funding sources could mean to our schools,” Vosloh said.

To contact Vosloh, email him at dvosloh@gmail.com.