READ ALL THE FACTS on the solar savings Victor Sims promises for teacher pay

At the Kiwanis Club forum on October 16, Victor Sims proposed putting solar panels on school roofs and redirecting the electricity savings into teacher salaries. The Polk County school district's own 2025-26 budget puts total utilities at $17,106,883. Salaries and benefits are 61 percent of the budget, roughly $777 million, so a one percent raise costs about $7.77 million. A realistic rooftop offset of 20 percent saves about $3.4 million, which is 44 percent of a single percent raise, about $263 per employee. Erase one hundred percent of the electric bill, which rooftop solar cannot do, and it funds roughly a two percent raise, once. Earlier he told a union screening the savings would be about $8,000 per employee. That figure is roughly thirty times a plausible offset and six times an impossible one. He has never said who buys the panels.