Of Boards and Budgets

As mentioned in my previous post, last night, February 17^th, I attended the bi-weekly meeting of our School Board and spoke on behalf of our Elementary Band program. The vote to eliminate it from last year’s budget had already been made in the previous meeting. No action was scheduled for this meeting, and none was taken. But it did give me some insight on precisely what precipitated this decision, and others.

We were informed, and reminded on numerous occasions, that the School Board is required by law to provide semi-annual reports that demonstrate the district’s financial solvency for the next three years. As many of you undoubtedly know by now, the State of California is having trouble with its own budget, and because of this, the district has to prepare this report based on what it considers to be the worst-case scenario. To add to this, any certificated employee that is going to be laid off must be given notification of this by March 15^th. That’s right, beware the Ides of March.

Ultimately, the Board had to eliminate $5.9 million from the current, 2008-09, budget. They also have $12.6 million to eliminate from next year’s budget. Those are some significant numbers, and I certainly do not envy any of the decisions that they have to make. Fortunately, there is hope that, as soon as the state budget is passed, we will have a better idea of what the actual budget figures are, as well as what additional flexibility there may be in how the district spends money (more on flexibility later). The other thing that gave me hope is that, at the end of the meeting, the School Board President went back to the Elementary Band issue, and asked to be provided with data on the correlation between music and test scores. Although the question wasn’t directed to me, I had provided much of that “testimony”, and had a copy of my remarks with links to the websites that I used to compile my evidence, so I volunteered it. As we all know, test scores are everything to districts, which is why I moved away from anecdotal evidence about the more intangible benefits of a musical education and focused on the correlation between music and academic performance, especially as it related to test scores. With all this considered, I am guardedly optimistic that, in the end, the Elementary Band program will not fall victim to the budgetary axe.

I haven’t made it a habit to attend School Board meetings, but this wasn’t my first, either. One thing that I have heard on more than one occasion is that only a small portion of the district’s budget is discretionary. The problem that I have with that is that the stuff that ends up being discretionary has a tendency to be the stuff that directly affects the classroom, whether it is teacher pay, class size, extra-curricular activities, or specialized programs. Although I have no reason to doubt what portions of the budget are discretionary and which are not, the cynic in me wonders if this isn’t part of the overall plan – that by cutting programs that people are most passionate about it makes it more likely that they will be able to pass tax increases, special levies, or other revenue increases.

Here’s an idea. Why don’t we treat all these regulations that relate to school budgets and spending more like the Code of the Brethren from Pirates of the Caribbean, “the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” Maybe we don’t want to go all the way to guidelines, but we should have a simple way of petitioning for waiver. Better yet, the regulations should never be constraints on spending, but guidelines and requirements on the level of service to be provided. At that point, individual districts would be allowed great leeway in how they complied with these regulations.

I would like to thank everyone that sent me their stories, suggestions, sources and support. I can't tell you how much help it was, nor how much it means to me.