Take This Budget and Shove........not down MY Throat

The School Board in the past 2 months has received about a dozen possible ideas from the Superintendent that would reduce our 14-20 million dollar deficit depending how you look at it.
1. Eliminate busing for High School Students
2. Eliminate busing for Magnet School Students
3. Freeze all employee salaries
4. Vision 2020 which closed and combined small inter-city elementary schools
5. Vision 2020 which combined middle schools with 4 underpopulated and underachieving High Schools
6. Increasing the teacher/pupil ratio or actually changing the staffing formula used to staff schools
7. Reduce Central Office personnel
8. Reduce Central Office out of state travel by 50%
9. Reassess the use of school vehicles by staff
10. Delay purchase of new buses
11. Eliminate the $200 teaching supply money allocated for each teacher

We have been given our projected costs for next year, but just dollar amounts not specifics.  When they talk about reducing staff in Central Office, they give a total amount of dollars saved by cutting x number of jobs. But what are the exact positions we will cut to save those dollars?  Well, we had 2 budget work sessions last week which amounted to a total of 4 hours wasted on vague numbers and ideas. Some ideas may not even be legal.  Most are not educationally sound.  Prior to this superintendent, we started the budget process in February.  Each year since Dr. Dawkins has been here, it has moved later and later.  This year, it was the middle of April before we had the first worthless budget work session.  But from Dr. Dawkins' point of view it is not worthless.  I really believe he is a  genius in psychology.  It is a game of pretending to provide information with a lot of made up numbers, wearing us out with fruitless meetings, asking us to write down our requests for information and never answering them, and finally we've run out of time--it must be passed tonight!

Tonight was a regular work session for our voting meeting on May 17th.  When I looked online at the agenda this weekend and last night, there were actually just routine type items.  Not much to work on.  But as I was driving, I got a call that there was a special session with requested revision to our staffing formula. Of course, when I sat down at my station before the meeting was called to order, I began to have dialogue with myself and anyone that might be listening, that it isn't legal to spring this on us.  I actually don't know when the special session was put on line, but I didn't get an e-mail from the secretary telling us about the special meeting.  Anyway, the board president over heard my fussing and told me that it was pulled until the meeting on May 17th.  Putting it on the agenda was an accident--does anyone believe that?

Yes, my darling son, Paxton is playing the cello.

But that is almost as bad, but of course not really.  The new tactic is for us to vote on policies rather than budget items.  If we revise (increase) our teacher/pupil ratio, we will have approved a major budget item.  I was very vocal against this. And I also said that I want all items like this addressed in the budget not as a policy.  There is nothing wrong with our current policy.  
The change is purely to reduce the deficit by putting more students in the classrooms and eliminating art, music and other electives.

When board member, Barry Rachel, said quite clearly that he does not want to eliminate music, the superintendent quickly chimed in that he also did not want to.  But of course, that is a play with words.  I spoke out, that while no one wants to eliminate the arts and enrichments, that is exactly what happens when the staffing formula is revised this way. There will not be enough staff allocated to hire teachers for music, band, art and other electives.

So tonight I wrote a list of 7 items on which I want information that could affect our budget. Board member, Curtis Hooks looked at my list and asked me was I just doing handwriting practice. Actually, we are just passing time until that finally board meeting when it will be critical to pass the SURPRISE budget--you know the real stuff that we will get Monday afternoon before the voting meeting Tuesday.  There are always 7 board members who have been lulled to sleep and just want to get it over with.