Harry Jones Places A Bad Bet
Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones might want to steer clear of Las Vegas, where people who make wild wagers are gobbled up faster than a cheap buffet.
As part of the $1.4 billion county budget recommendation Jones rolled out this week, he included a $9.1 million funding increase for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. A hefty chunk of change, no doubt, but far short of the $27.5 million increase CMS has requested with the plea that the money is needed for teacher pay raises.
In defending his budget proposal, Jones opined that, “The school system has a budget that’s in excess of a billion dollars. This budget is not a reflection on me, that I don’t value teachers, at all. I would suggest to you that out of a $1.3 billion budget, that if the school system says that teacher salaries are a high priority they will find a way in that $1.3 billion budget, I believe, to address that top priority.
“I would wager a small bet that if this is a high priority,” Jones continued, “they [CMS] will find a way to fund those teachers out of the existing resources that they have.”
There’s little doubt CMS could find a way to cover pay raises for teachers, who have gone without any for three years; indeed, Commissioner Bill James notes that in a recent post on Facebook, school board member Rhonda Lennon offered that, “The money from teacher raises can come from 2 areas, as I specified when I voted against the budget: Reductions in the cost of Bright Beginnings and Implementation of Privatization efforts in janitorial and IT services.”
No, where Jones would lose his bet quicker than a drunk at the craps table is by assuming that the school board’s liberal majority would have any inclination to actually dip a toe into its own funding pool when they can have the county board carry their water. And the school board has good reason to think commissioners will.
It worked like a charm last year when CMS punted funding for Bright Beginnings, a pre-K program with questionable academic benefit but popular liberal support, to the county board. School board members openly encouraged the public to pressure commissioners to provide money for the program, which CMS hadn’t even ranked as a top-tier priority. And, sure enough, after the CMS gimme-crowd played its designated role, the county came off the hip with an additional $26 million for CMS.
Why would Jones bet that this year would be any different? School board chairman Ericka Ellis-Stewart, in fact, is already launching the ground-game offensive, foreshadowing that, “Commissioners still need to hear from the public to support or adjust [the CMS allotment] up or down.”
Cue the battle cry: commissioners hate children if they don’t give CMS more money for teachers.
Unless a majority of commissioners wise up and refuse to let CMS play them like cheap fiddles – again – odds favor Jones losing his bet.
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