School Board Looks To Balloon Budget
Hitting taxpayers up for a $55 million funding increase, and then canceling a budget workshop scheduled for this week, apparently passes for compromise these days with the school board. It’s also what passes for fiscal conservatism.
A majority of the board last night endorsed a proposal, floated by board chair Eric Davis, to seek an additional $45 million in county funding for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, over and above the additional $10 million ask already included in Superintendent Peter Gorman’s budget recommendation. An official vote on the proposal is slated for the board’s May 10 meeting, but only one member – Kaye McGarry – voiced opposition Tuesday night to pursuing the funding hike.
The extra loot, according to Davis, would prevent CMS from having to fire 260 teachers in grades 4-12 ($15.4 million); save 146 teacher jobs through the district’s weighted student staffing formula ($8.6 million); and save 164 instructional support positions ($11.1 million) and 328 teacher assistants jobs ($9.2 million), while also salvaging 80 Pre-K classrooms from proposed cuts to the Bright Beginnings program ($10.4 million).
Board members encouraged the public to lobby commissioners to support the increased funding, largely by capturing revenue expected to come through property revalution and maintaining the current tax rate, which officials have predicted could pour an additional $50 million to $70 million into county coffers.
So why does Davis not want you to get a tax cut, in effect wants you to pay more taxes?
“Overall, we’ve stretched our system to its full capacity and we can go no further without long-term harm,” he said Tuesday night.
“I don’t think we’d be bold to do it,” board member Joe White opined regarding the $55 million ask. “I think we’d be irresponsible not to.”
Board member Richard McElrath indicated that he would support the $55 million proposal, but with some reservations.
“When it comes to asking for more money we need to make sure our house is in order and we’ve done all that we know we can do,” McElrath said, noting that he had found upwards of 2,400 non-classroom, administrative positions in the current CMS budget.
“We have to show that whatever they’re doing is more important than teachers in the classroom,” he said, “because we’re not cutting them.”
Asking the county for an additional $55 million, reasoned board member Rhonda Lennon, was a compromise between staying true to the principles of fiscal conservatism and providing needed services for the children.
“As a board member who openly campaigned on the principles of fiscal conservatism and budget restraint,” Lennon said (with a straight face, no less), “I find myself in the dubious position of honoring my own core beliefs yet recognizing and acknowledging the voices of the public.”
The public apparently being those who Lennon said represented the “quite majority and those who clamor for fiscal responsibility.”
And what better way to recognize and acknowledge those voices than to hit the taxpayers up for $55 million?
Board member Tim Morgan echoed that sentiment. Compromise, he said, is a recognition that while throwing more money at weighted student staffing and Bright Beginnings aren’t necessarily key issues impacting his largely suburban, south Mecklenburg district, they are important issues for urban districts.
“Recognizing that,” Morgan said, “I’m looking at what’s going to be necessary to move this district as a whole forward.”
In that vein, Morgan seemed empathetic towards Lennon, who represents suburban north Mecklenburg, and what the duo’s apparent decision to support a $55 million funding increase could mean to what Morgan tagged their “fiscal conservative credentials.”
“I’m not worried about them,” Lennon said. “They’re really solid.”
Grab your wallets, folks. It’s going to be a brutal ride.
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