The Next Budget Meeting Needs to be a Course Correction

Apr 21, 20234 Comments

What the District Can Do to Increase Public Confidence

Given the rankings and ratings that recently came out, it is clear that the massive investments in attorneys and central administration have not paid off. It is also clear that the last thing we should do is remove any resources from our schools. That does not mean we can’t re-think how the supervisor’s positions are used, but that is a different conversation entirely.

Going to Shauna’s prior articles and Natasha’s point at the last BOE meeting, if we are, in fact, on a “fiscal cliff” we should look to bring the number of central administrative positions in line with other Districts (who are performing better than we are) by removing at least one Assistant Superintendent. As I wrote about last week, the role of Superintendent has no empirical evidence to support its value – so what’s the justification behind paying for two positions that take on parts of that role?

The District can also consolidate some roles under the Business Administrator – New Providence is capable of running its Business office with five staff in their office, and looking at how the Districts line up, there is no reason why Berkeley Heights cannot follow their lead and remove three positions from its office (one of them being the recently created OPRA Custodian which we will be writing about soon).

Suppose an evidenced argument demonstrates that, based on enrollment, we don’t need as many teachers and “we would have let go of teachers anyway .”In that case, we should consider keeping those teachers to offer in-school and after-school support for students coping with the impact of learning loss, the botched BTC implementation, and Collaborative Model. The last thing we need right now is less support for students – we should want MORE boots on the ground working with our students to support them academically.

Now onto the Lawyers.

The practice of having an Attorney present at every meeting comes at the cost of about $165 an hour, and that practice needs to stop. The average BOE Meeting (being conservative here) can go on for 2.5 hours, and that does not include the Attorney’s presence during a closed session. The Business Administrator must also stop playing a shell game on the threshold for legally required oversight on utilizing Attorneys. Our legal costs have skyrocketed by nearly 90%, yet the District has encountered more ethics actions and OPRA lawsuits than it ever has experienced. There needs to be a clear log on the use of attorneys and a responsible adult providing oversight to the use of attorneys who can signal a red light when they are being used for reasons not connected to our policy or in the best interest of our students.

The issue of transfers should also be discussed, and while it appears the 1.2 Million dollars transferred out of the medical benefits line aligns with state regulations (we still have a lot more work to do before I can say it was firmly), there are still many questions surrounding them. We should, as a community, have more extensive discussions on how “found money” is used to support our students best. The “it’s only a small percentage of the budget” doesn’t fly when our budget is massive; we are talking about cutting teachers and supervisors and raising fees and taxes on families while still under-performing compared to other Districts in our area. 1.2 Million dollars is A LOT of money in two years, regardless of how you look at it.

In the longer term, the BOE needs to re-consider the weight it gives guidance from Central Administration, given how disconnected their recommendations and the District’s performance are from the realities our students and families face. Parents, principals, and teachers need to be given a prominent seat at the table in the budget process – the process needs to be more transparent, lateral, and informed – spanning the year prior so that Budgets aren’t 11th-hour cage matches.

We need to identify how our spending dollars connect directly to student performance empirically. Our goal should be that every dollar spent needs to answer the question “How is this going to improve our child’s education?” with data. Of course, we will never achieve 100% on that goal, but goals and objectives that can be measured to academics and well-being should be tied to dollars on paper.

The BOE and District Administration must demonstrate a clear, non-cosmetic commitment to change. If that does not happen, the voices demanding that the budget move to a public vote will only grow in numbers and volume.