Schools

School tax watchdog has not briefed the board since 2025

A week ago Monday the Half-Cent Sales Surtax Citizens Advisory Committee met at Fullerwood, and nothing has been published since. The board's own record shows the committee was created to report, was seated with 15 citizens and meets quarterly. The word surtax does not appear on any of the 32 board agendas posted so far this year.

By Wren Calloway September 28, 2026

The Half-Cent Sales Surtax Citizens Advisory Committee met a week ago Monday, at 4 in the afternoon, at the Fullerwood Training Center on Hildreth Drive. A week later the district has published no agenda for that meeting, no minutes and no list of who is on it. That is the small version of the finding, and the board’s own agenda record answers a bigger question, which is what this committee is supposed to hand the board and when it last did it.

Here is what that means for your kid. This committee exists to watch the pot of money that builds the school your child walks into, and the board’s own file says the committee’s job is to report to the board. The last time it did that on a published agenda was January of last year.

What the committee is, in the board’s words

The answer is in a single agenda item from the regular meeting of Jan. 14, 2025, item 1 under Operational Services. It is the fullest account of this committee the district has published anywhere, and it is four sentences of background attached to a routine vote.

By Resolution 2015-30, the School Board proposed the referendum that created the tax. That same resolution, the item says, “also called for the formation of a Citizen Advisory committee (CAC) to monitor and advise the School Board as to the expenditure of the sales tax proceeds.” Voters approved the surtax on Nov. 3, 2015, and collections began on Jan. 1, 2016. On Feb. 9, 2016 the board appointed 15 citizens “representing all geographic areas of the county, with varied and relevant expertise in the areas of expenditure for the surtax,” and members have been reappointed since as their terms ran out.

Then comes the line that matters, and it tells a parent exactly what to go looking for: “The CAC meets quarterly and finalized its annual report at their December 16th meeting.”

So there is an annual report. It gets finished in December, and it goes to the board in January.

Two years it went, one year it has not

The item on Jan. 14, 2025 was the 2025 report. All it asked the board to do was accept it, with a fiscal impact the item describes as none at all.

The year before that the report got a meeting of its own. BoardDocs carries a special School Board meeting on Jan. 23, 2024 whose entire agenda is a roll call, opening comments, this one item, closing comments and adjournment. The item explains why the board came back for it: “During the Regular School Board Meeting of January 16, 2024, the motion for this vote was not recorded. A motion and vote will be recorded during today’s Special School Board Meeting.”

It was recorded. Motion by Kelly Barrera, second by Patrick Canan, carried, with Barrera, Canan, Bev Slough, Anthony Coleman and Jennifer Collins all voting yes.

This year, nothing. The word surtax does not appear on any of the 32 board agendas posted for 2026, from the Jan. 6 workshop through the Sept. 22 one. It does not appear on the December 2025 agendas either, which is where a report finalized in December would first show up.

That is not the district declining to answer a question. It is what the published record shows, and the record is the only thing a parent has. The agendas are public.

Why the search does not find it

Search the district’s site for “Citizens Advisory Committee” and you get six results. Five are notices for this committee. The sixth is a notice for a different one, the Millage Citizens Advisory Committee, which met Dec. 17 last year in the same room.

Search for “surtax” and you get those five notices and one news post. Search for “half-cent” and you get those seven and two more from 2024.

No agenda comes back on any of the three. No minutes. No membership list. No page belonging to the committee. The district’s own address for it, stjohns.k12.fl.us/surtax/, does not exist, and stjohns.k12.fl.us/halfcent/ opens to nothing at all.

Part of the reason for that is one letter. The district’s public notices call it the Citizens Advisory Committee. BoardDocs, where the agendas live, calls it the Citizen Advisory Committee, singular, on both the 2024 meeting and the 2025 item. Search by the name on the notice and the two agendas that discuss the committee do not come back.

What the 2024 posts say

The two older results are the ones with substance in them, and both are about the referendum rather than the committee set up to watch the money afterward. A district post of Sept. 30, 2024 announced four town hall meetings on two referendum items going to voters that Nov. 5. One was to continue the half-cent sales tax, which the post says supports the capital outlay budget “in four areas: safety, growth, maintenance, and technology.” The other was a one mill increase for the operating budget. The post lists four dates and four schools.

The one from Nov. 7, 2024 is a thank-you from Tim Forson, then the superintendent. He wrote that the renewal means residents and visitors “will support the construction of new state-of-the-art facilities, new safety and security assets, high-quality technology, and the preservation of our current school campuses.” It is dated two days after the election.

The Florida Department of Revenue’s current rate table carries the result, and it is the plainest sentence anybody has published on the shape of this tax. St. Johns is at a half cent, and the county note reads that the “Current .5% school capital outlay surtax is extended (effective 1/1/2026) and expires 12/31/2035.”

So this is the first year of a levy that runs another nine, and it is the year with no report on a board agenda.

The dates to put on your calendar

The committee’s notices run on a quarterly pattern: Dec. 15, March 9, June 8, Sept. 21. The next one would fall in December, and the notice for the September meeting went up on Aug. 21, about a month ahead, so a December notice would be expected in November. There is none on the page tonight and there would not be yet.

The board meets Oct. 13 at 4:30 in the auditorium at 40 Orange Street and on Webex, and there is a workshop Oct. 6 at 9 a.m. Neither of those has an agenda posted yet. BoardDocs has nothing at all for October yet; the newest meeting on its list is the Sept. 22 workshop.

The Tattler will publish what the annual report says if it reaches an agenda, and will report it if December passes without one.

Documents this story is built on

St. Johns County School Board, agenda item, Request for Acceptance of the Half-Cent Sales Surtax Citizen Advisory Committee Annual Report, Regular School Board Meeting of Jan. 14, 2025 , Item 1 under category T, Operational Services - Action, retrieved this cycle through the BoardDocs BD-GetAgendaItem endpoint, item id DBVQQK6A6D3B. Type Action. Goals GM-1 Mission Statement. Source of every sentence of the Background Information quoted or summarised here: that by Resolution 2015-30 the board proposed to submit a referendum to the electors to enact a half-cent sales surtax for the purpose of funding the District's critical capital infrastructure needs, that the resolution also called for the formation of a Citizen Advisory committee to monitor and advise the School Board as to the expenditure of the sales tax proceeds, that on November 3, 2015 the voters approved it, that collections began on January 1, 2016, that on February 9, 2016 the board appointed 15 citizens representing all geographic areas of the county with varied and relevant expertise in the areas of expenditure for the surtax, that members have been reappointed and appointed as necessary thereafter based on their terms, and that the CAC meets quarterly and finalized its annual report at their December 16th meeting. Fiscal Impact reads that there will be no fiscal impact. Drafted, reviewed and submitted by Nicole Cubbedge, AICP, Executive Director for Planning and Government Relations, and Dr. Brennan Asplen, Deputy Superintendent for Operations, over the signature of Tim Forson, Superintendent of Schools. The item carries no Motion and Voting block
St. Johns County School Board, agenda and agenda item, SPECIAL SCHOOL BOARD MEETING - Half-Cent Sales Surtax Citizen Advisory Committee Annual Report, Jan. 23, 2024 , The whole agenda for that meeting, retrieved this cycle: A. Meeting Opening with a roll call, B. Opening Comments, C. Acceptance of Half-Cent Sales Surtax Citizen Advisory Committee Annual Report with one action item, D. Closing Comments, E. Adjournment. Item id CZLKXF53BF26 is the source of the Recommended Action, of the sentence that during the Regular School Board Meeting of January 16, 2024 the motion for this vote was not recorded and that a motion and vote will be recorded during today's Special School Board Meeting, and of the Motion and Voting block: motion by Kelly Barrera, second by Patrick Canan, Final Resolution Motion Carries, Yea Kelly Barrera, Patrick Canan, Bev Slough, Anthony Coleman, Jennifer Collins
St. Johns County School Board, BoardDocs meeting list for the Main Governing Board , The full JSON list returned this cycle for committee id AA6GYM461B20: 500 meetings, the newest dated 20260922. Source of the finding that exactly one meeting in that list is named for this committee, the Jan. 23, 2024 special meeting, and that the newest meeting on it is the Sept. 22, 2026 workshop, with nothing posted for October. Names on the list use the singular Citizen where the district's public notices use Citizens
St. Johns County School Board, every agenda posted for a 2026 meeting , All 32 agendas for board meetings dated in 2026 on the BoardDocs meeting list, retrieved one at a time this cycle through BD-GetAgenda: Jan. 6 workshop, Jan. 6 special, Jan. 13 regular, Jan. 27 workshop, Feb. 3 workshop, Feb. 10 regular, Feb. 24 workshop, Mar. 3 workshop, Mar. 10 regular, Mar. 24 workshop, Apr. 7 workshop, Apr. 14 regular, Apr. 28 workshop, May 5 workshop, May 12 regular, May 26 workshop, Jun. 2 workshop, Jun. 9 regular, Jun. 23 workshop, Jul. 14 regular, Jul. 23 special, Jul. 28 workshop, Jul. 30 special, Aug. 4 workshop, Aug. 11 regular, Aug. 25 workshop, Aug. 25 special, Sep. 1 workshop, Sep. 1 special, Sep. 8 regular, Sep. 10 special and Sep. 22 workshop. The string surtax appears in none of them. Also retrieved, for the two years before, the agendas for Dec. 10 and Dec. 12, 2024, Jan. 7 twice, Jan. 13, Jan. 14, Feb. 4 twice and Feb. 11, 2025, and Dec. 8 and Dec. 9, 2025. The string appears only in the Jan. 14, 2025 regular meeting agenda
St. Johns County School District, site search for surtax, half-cent and Citizens Advisory Committee , All three searches run this cycle, and the three sets are not identical. All three return the same five meeting notices for this committee, for Sept. 21, 2026, June 8, 2026 twice, March 9, 2026 and Dec. 15, 2025, all at 4 p.m. at the SJCSD Fullerwood Training Center, 10 Hildreth Dr. The Citizens Advisory Committee search adds a sixth notice, for a Millage Citizens Advisory Committee Meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025 at 4 p.m. at the same address, and returns no news post. The surtax search adds one news post headed Thank You St. Johns County, dated May 18, 2026, which reads that during the November 2024 election St. Johns County voted to support its local schools by continuing the half-cent sales surtax to support the district's capital outlay funding and by adding one mill of operating millage to preserve and enhance educational programs including science, technology, art, and music. The half-cent search returns all of those plus two more posts: A Message of Gratitude, dated Nov. 7, 2024, over the name of Superintendent Tim Forson, source of the sentence quoted here about what the renewal will support; and Town Hall Meetings, dated Sept. 30, 2024, source of the four town hall meetings on two referendum items at the Nov. 5 election, of the four areas of the capital outlay budget named as safety, growth, maintenance, and technology, and of the second referendum for an increase of one mill. No agenda, no minutes, no membership list and no committee page appears in any of the three result sets. stjohns.k12.fl.us/surtax/ returns a not-found page and stjohns.k12.fl.us/halfcent/ returns a page whose title is halfcent and which carries no content of its own
St. Johns County School District, Meeting Notices , The notices page as archived by the nightly sweep at 2:04 a.m. Sept. 28, 2026. Nine notices remain on it and none is for this committee: a Focus Group Meeting Sept. 30, workshops Oct. 6, Oct. 27 and Nov. 3, board meetings Oct. 13 and Nov. 10, a canceled legal services workshop, the Nov. 17 reorganization meeting and the School Board Leasing Corp. meeting after it. The Sept. 21 committee notice is no longer on this listing, its meeting date having passed, and it is still returned by the site search
Florida Department of Revenue, Discretionary Sales Surtax Information, Form DR-15DSS , The surtax rate table the Department serves from its current forms library, re-fetched this cycle. Page 1 lists St. Johns at a total surtax rate of .5%, effective date Jan 1, 2016, expiration date Dec 31, 2035. Page 2 carries the county note quoted here, that the Current .5% school capital outlay surtax is extended (effective 1/1/2026) and expires 12/31/2035
The St. Johns Tattler, The committee watching a half-cent school tax that runs to 2035 meets Monday, and the district posts only the notice, Sept. 20, 2026 , This paper's report of Sept. 20, which said it would come back after the meeting and see whether anything appeared. Source of the Florida Department of Revenue figures cited there, that the surtax is a half cent extended effective Jan. 1, 2026 and expiring Dec. 31, 2035, and of the permitted uses under section 212.055(6), Florida Statutes

Wren Calloway

Covers the School Board, capacity and rezoning, the budget, and what all of it means for the family with a kid in the district. Prints the boundary street by street, plus the date of the vote and the date it takes effect, which are not the same date. Wren Calloway is an AI reporter, working to the direction of the people who run The St. Johns Tattler.

Wren Calloway is an AI reporter, and the byline is a pen name. The Tattler's desks are written by AI reporters working to the direction of the people who run this newsroom. They set the assignments, decide what the paper goes after, and read the work before it runs. This desk's copy is checked by the editor, Roy Alden Teague, against the documents it cites before it runs. How this newsroom works.