The Wicomico County Board of Education’s first public budget hearing for the fiscal year 2014-2015 budget will be held at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15 in the Board of Education Auditorium, Mt. Hermon Road and Long Avenue, Salisbury. Parents, students, community members and Board staff are invited to come with comments. Public input is critically important in the budget process for Wicomico County Public Schools. For information please call 410-677-4561.
The FY 2014-15 budget process began in September with the goal of building a budget that will support the Board’s strategic priorities of High Student Achievement, Safe Learning Environment, and Effective and Efficient Operations. To ensure that the school system effectively analyzes its use of fiscal resources, the school system is using a budgeting methodology known as “zero-based budgeting.” This budget process requires all budget managers to construct their budgets from a baseline of zero. Every dollar requested must be substantiated in order to be considered for funding. This compares to the traditional process known as “incremental budgeting” where the baseline is the prior year’s allotment and budget managers must only justify their incremental increase.
“Unfortunately, we do not anticipate financial relief for our district in the coming budget year,” wrote Dr. Cathy J. Townsend, Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services, in a memo to budget managers. “In an effort to drill down into our financial resources and specifically identify our proposed fiscal needs, there will be additional steps to do zero-based budgeting in this year’s budget development process. We believe this new process will help us make what we expect to be some very difficult decisions.”
Budget managers have provided detail for all requested line items, supplied a detailed rationale for all full-time staff members, and explained their budget requests in meetings with the Budget Development Processing Team. Increases of staffing or funding in any budget areas should be supported by a transfer from existing budget funds. A director’s endorsement will be needed for the consideration of any requests for new staffing, programs or funds, and the new requests must match up closely with the Comprehensive Master Plan.
“We are implementing this new process to help us navigate what we believe will be yet another very difficult budget development process,” Dr. Townsend said. “Over the past four fiscal years we have cut more than $22 million from our General Fund Unrestricted Operating Budget, and we must be prepared to cut again in FY 2014-2015. Due to rising costs for everything from health insurance to utilities to instructional supplies, cuts will be necessary just to sustain our current, ongoing operations.”
Throughout the budget process, input will be taken at comments@wcboe.org and on the Public Input Line (410-677-5251), in addition to during public budget hearings.
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Between Dr. Freddy and Rickster, lots of tax hikes ahead!
ReplyDeleteGosh, it takes sooooo much administration to do this.... No way to cut!
ReplyDeleteRiiiiight!
Cut out "behavioral specialists." Kids can be helped by the CARES teacher, guidance counselor, dean of students or in school suspension person. Cut out after school programs that require buses to do a separate run to take children home which costs a fortune. The board of education should not be paying for social workers either when there is a county department for that purpose. Not every cent in the education budget should be spent on at risk students, especially when there has been almost no improvement in achievement or behavior.
ReplyDeleteCould we stop trying to close the achievement gap by not teaching the top students? The gap to close is the difference in the percentage of out of wedlock births among the various ethnic groups. It might also be good to close the gap between how many children somebody can support and how many children that somebody has. Wonder why those aren't gaps that get talked about.
ReplyDeletecut fat at the top. there's plenty there. do teachers pay for any of their health insurance? if not; they should like the rest of us. travel and meeting costs? how about "go to meeting" online? there's still ways to cut, but they don't want to.
ReplyDeleteAsk how many positions have been added to the central office in the past five years. Sometimes people who are promoted can't do the job so others have to be hired "under" them to do the actual work. There's always money enough for that.
ReplyDeleteCurriculum and professional development should be handled by the elementary director and the secondary director. There is no need for a separate director of curriculum and p.d. especially since principals and supervisors do all p.d. Someone in finance can say how much money is in the p.d. account without paying a director to oversee that money.
ReplyDeleteWith response to the above mentioned posts, I believe that it is important to share a few details with regard to the current and complex budget process. As a former administrator (now retired) I believe my insights may be helpful to those who are interested. First, with regard to the cutting of positions noted (I.e. Behavior specialists; social workers in schools, etc), these are the individuals who are specially trained to attend to the learning and social needs of truly challenging children who are presented with grave difficulties that were not of their own doing. While it may be convenient for some to simply remark that to remove the positions noted above and let others attend to these issues is quite concerning. The sheer number of children needing these services and support is staggering, and to remove these positions would most certainly result is grievous safety and security issues in the schools, and lead to long term issues that law
ReplyDeleteEnforcement would ultimately need to attend to. As for the health insurance issue, all employees do indeed pay for this, and rates are raised accordingly like other LEAs. As for curriculum and PD positions, there is simply too much required by MSDE and the federal government for school principals to do alone adequately. In short, there are no easy answers, and as a tax paying citizen, I no more wish to see taxes raised than anyone else, but that will indeed be part of this picture. Regardless of personal thoughts on this issue (such as reduction of central office staff), residents will need to brace for a tax increase.
Respectfully,
Paladin