For example, Talbot County provides over twice much per student in local funds in its budget, and the only ones on the Eastern Shore that provide less are Somerset (just barely) and Caroline. Worcester provides over 3 times as much in it’s budget. This is truly shocking.
13 comments:
Thanks, revenue cap supporters! You couldn't figure out that what you really wanted was a tax cap. Ugh. Cut all of the sports teams. That might make you people figure out how dumb that vote was.
they should cut the sports teams. schools should provide education, not athletics.
Unfortunately, it actually may be a planned strategy. Wicomico County has always seemed to have had an adverserial attitude toward the education side of the budget.
In its funding effort almost always the County ends up with the largest portion of funds. As shown this seemed to start when the people ammended the County Charter to adopt the Revenue Cap. Hence the strategy may be to short fund the education system, knowing that this government institution has more resources,sentiment, and political influence to continue to disparage the revenue cap.
If the school system can be convinced that the County has not been doing this intentionally, which by the way I do believe they have, it could cause a community uproar and lead to an attempt to abolish the cap.
When you compare both these government agencies to the private sector, permanancy of job, benefits, retirement,stability and overall compensation, it seems that many areas exist for some decrease in cost.
The plain fact is that the schools in Wicomico County are underfunded in its budget. Fortunately, there has been increased state funding during the past 10 years, but that is now changing, and the state's "maintenance of effort" rule requires a certain amount of local funding to get a substantial part of the available state funds.
We would be able to provide the "matching" funds in the County budget that are required to get the state funds if there were no (or a different) tax revenue cap.
As it is, the areas of the budget that have grown at about 2 times the rate as the school portion of the County's budget must take the hit in order to fund "maintenance of effort." That's exactly what is happening in Worcester and most other counties this year.
And that's the way it is, whether you like it or not.
Anybody who looks at that should be concerned about the quality of the education our kids are receiving. Those numbers are disturbing. One thing to keep in mind that over 40% of our schools qualify as Title 1 schools, which means that they have a very high percentage of kids living in poverty. Kids living in poverty brings lot of additional challenges, such as, parental involvement, special needs children, and proper nutrition. We can do better than this.
Even if we get thru this year's school funding debacle, in the future there will be much less funding by the State of Maryland as it cuts that further to balance its budget. By next year, Wicomico will need to increase its portion of the school funding to at least one-third or 35% and probably closed to 50% in a few years. With the tax cap that will not be possible, and the other counties are already complaining that we are not paying our "fair share" compared to them -- the statewide average is about 50% local funding for the schools, whereas in Wicomico County it is slightly more than 25%.
The ship is headed for the rocks but there's nobody at the helm under Pollitt and the current County Council ("the Seven Dwarfs").
All this money comes from the same pockets. Last time I checked, I pay state, federal, county, local, sales and any other tax as a resident of Wicomico County, Maryland in the U.S.A. Just because the state funds more of the money than the county (as it does with all of the counties in the State) doesn't mean that we should be spending more and more money on the budget. $12,000 (I've stated erroneously on other posts $14,000-because that's the state avg) per student per year should be enough for Wicomico County and I expect the school system to find some cuts. The county provides $50million, BOE can try and cut $2 million-that's a 4% cut, how's that for a statistic.
FYI:
This morning Montgomery County -- which applied for a $80 Million waiver from maintenance of effort and was denied -- adopted a budget that fully funds that amount.
If you're not happy with the school funding that Wicomico County gives to the BOE, you have the option of sending your brats to a private school.
I would suggest that those who think the BOE is under funded, write a check and send to them. Long live the revenue cap.
Look at the number of positions created at the central office of the Bd of Ed. Too many directors, coordinators, liaisons for a county that's underfunded. At least twenty percent of the positions can be eliminated entirely and some of the rest can be combined. There are many hardworking people at the central office. But there are many who do almost nothing and get paid as fulltime employees.
I have a great idea to help balance this BOE budget... start cutting breakfasts for students, all sports at the middle and high school level, and all other afterschool programs that are in place and let the PARENTS actually have to DEAL with their freaking kids and not the schools having to basically raise them and then have people who have NO CLUE as to what actually goes on within schools bitch endlessly.
Also get rid of Summer School at all grade levels so parents will also have to deal with their kids during the summertime instead of pushing them off on to the schools to babysit.
7:20pm you're one of the school administrators, aren't you? Why else would you offer cutting the student part of the funding and not your own benefits or worse your job security? There is so much beauracracy at the school board that keeps adding more and more for the teachers to deal with instead of focusing on education of the students. A better solution to the brats in schools,I think -the parents of children who are problems should be forced to pay for private schools. That's right, no alternative school, just kick their bum kids out, if we had this rule, more parents would be involved.
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