If Flagler County School Board members aren’t panicking over next year’s budget, they’re either putting on a good act or not fully grasping the breadth of the rapidly changing financial landscape and disappearing dollars that district staff outlined for them at a meeting Tuesday. Large parts of the budget are cloaked in smoke and mirrors–not because district staff is playing with the numbers, but because the federal and state governments are requiring the district to bank on dollars it will never see, or dollars that may never materialize, even though the dollars have to be included in the budget.
