For the third straight year, enrollment dropped in Palm Beach County's public schools, a change administrators blame on South Florida's high cost of living, faltering economy and shaky real estate market.

After years of struggling to keep up with increasing enrollment, administrators now warn that for the next few years a lower student population could bring unwanted consequences, including delayed construction projects and fewer elective classes.

Established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program, the Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

Established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program, the Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

In this report, we consider the accuracy and appropriateness of several aspects of the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) – the Florida Price Level Index (FPLI), the Sparsity Adjustment, and Discretionary Millage.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) was established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). In this role, the FPLI is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

This report presents and discusses the 2004 Florida County Retail Price Index, the FCRPI, and the 2004 Florida County Wage Index, the FCWI, produced by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, BEBR, at the University of Florida.

In recent years, numerous reports have analyzed Florida’s tax system and argued for change. Although these reports are useful in documenting the current situation, they tend to be one-dimensional—focusing only on the revenue side. In fact, state budgets reflect both revenues and services those revenues support, and thus analysis should take into account both elements—and the tradeoff between them. This analysis does just that, taking into account both taxes and the level of services they support.

This report presents and discusses the 2006 editions of the Florida County Retail Price Index (FCRPI) and the Florida County Wage Index (FCWI), produced by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida. In the narrowest sense, the FCRPI measures the relative expenditure required to purchase the same basket of goods and services purchased by the average Floridian in each of Florida’s counties at a particular point in time, in this case August 2006.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) was established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program. In this role, the FPLI is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts. Since 1995, and at the request of the Legislature, the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida has performed an ongoing review of the methodology of the FPLI and has made appropriate recommendations to improve it.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) was established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program. In this role, the FPLI is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.