NEWARK – Worcester County Public Schools Superintendent Lou Taylor will meet with county administration to address budget concerns following frustrations voiced by the Worcester County Commissioners this week.
Just a few hours after the commissioners asked the school system to provide more detailed information regarding the proposed education budget, school board members discussed how they wanted to proceed. They agreed to have Taylor and Vince Tolbert, the school system’s chief financial officer, meet with county administration.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” board member Bill Gordy said. “I don’t have a problem with them trying to find common ground.”
Todd Ferrante, president of the school board, asked his peers for their thoughts following Tuesday morning’s request from the commissioners for more budget information. They said that with a projected shortfall, they needed more detailed information about the school system’s spending plan for the coming year.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t be giving them what they’re asking for,” board member Katie Addis said. “I don’t see why us as board members should not be getting the same detailed budget.”
Board member Elena McComas said she understood how the economy could change and how the commissioners needed to take a closer look at spending. She said maybe the school board could be provided with a line-by-line detailed budget and have a work session to review it before forwarding that information to the commissioners.
Ferrante said he wanted to hear from board member Jon Andes, as he spent 16 years as superintendent.
“We were elected to decide what we should budget for the board of education,” Ferrante said. “That is why we all ran for office here. We were elected to do that. I think this is unprecedented.”
Andes said that when he was superintendent, the commissioners would ask questions and school system officials would provide answers to those questions.
“We would provide that additional detail on whatever the item happened to be,” Andes said.
Taylor said he had no opinion and was not giving an opinion but wanted to educate the board.
“Last year, we were told that it was going to be tough because they were going to be $5 million short,” he said. “They ended up having an $11.1 million dollar, and this is for educational purposes, $11 million excess money. That’s a $17 million swing.”
He said he was puzzled and didn’t know what he was supposed to tell teachers when they asked him why the commissioners were saying they had no money.
“They have an $82 million fund balance,” he said. “They have a, rough numbers, a $15 million budget stabilization fund.”
He said that while they’d assigned $41 million to specific projects, some of which were school system projects, that still left $41 million.
“Please tell me what I’m to say to 1,100 employees when they see that, because its public knowledge, all you have to do is request it. How do I answer, being a team player with the county, how do I answer my staff – meaning the school employees – that they’ve told me they don’t have any money, yet they see those numbers. That’s what’s puzzling to me.”
He added that the county was required to keep $25 million in fund balance but said he still didn’t understand how he was supposed to explain the situation to his employees. He added that the commissioners’ budget featured a projected shortfall every year until it was balanced.
Ferrante agreed and said the commissioners acknowledged they budgeted revenues very conservatively.
Taylor said he was also worried about the requests that might be made by commissioners if they had a line-by-line school system budget. He believes that if the commissioners start questioning things like just how many librarians the school system needs there will be challenges.
“I just caution the board as you deliberate on this topic to think about all the things we go through when we’re putting that budget together…,” he said.
Tolbert said he’d met with county administration and provided additional detail during Tuesday morning’s presentation.
“Ninety percent of our budget is salaries plus contractors,” he said. “It’s not things we can do away with. What I want to remind the board is this budget was a nine-month process.”
He added that parents and the public had weighed in during that process and said they wanted the school system to focus on retaining high quality teachers.
Taylor said he’d eliminated all the new positions school leaders had requested from the budget already and had also made other cuts.
“As you’re making your decision I will assure all of you, whatever you tell me you want done it’ll be done but I want you to think through this before you make a decision because it’s a big process,” he said.
Ferrante said Tolbert’s presentation had revealed more information to the commissioners than they’d had before.
“I understand there is a shortfall,” he said. “There was also a shortfall the previous year. It’s not really an unprecedented time because we were facing a shortfall before.”
Board member Bill Buchanan said the school board was there to provide oversight. He said members trusted staff to put together the best budget they could. Buchanan added that the commissioners always said the county was in the midst of a difficult budget year.
Addis said she disagreed with Buchanan’s assertion that the board should rely on staff to develop the budget.
“Our job as elected officials is to scrutinize the budget, not to trust it’s all being done correctly,” she said.
Addis said the commissioners were just trying to do due diligence. She said she liked the suggestion of a workshop meeting for further discussion regarding the details of the budget.
Buchanan said it wasn’t the board’s place to determine for example how many nurses should be on duty in a particular school.
“I think it’s a case-by-case basis,” Addis said.
Taylor reminded the board that 90% of the proposed budget was fixed costs and personnel spending. Buchanan asked if board members were capable of doing the in-depth budgetary analysis Addis suggested.
“That is our role,” she responded. “If we’re not capable of doing it we never should have signed up for the job.”
She said she herself still had questions about the budget. Ferrante asked if Tolbert had not answered all of her questions.
She said he had but she felt his answers needed to be public knowledge.
McComas said she thought board members should ask questions and gather information from staff so they could go back and present that to their constituents as needed.
“My thing is to learn, to know, to ask questions and then go to my constituents,” she said, adding that those questions didn’t always need to be asked in a public meeting. “It’s a matter of getting the information out. I understand we need transparency. I think we can do it in a way that isn’t laborious.”
Taylor suggested he and Tolbert meet with county administration “to try to pinpoint exactly what they want.” He added that he was concerned they’d want the name and salary of all 1,100 school system employees.
Ferrante said that was public knowledge and had been out in the public eye in previous years.
Taylor acknowledged that he and Tolbert had already met with county administration. Tolbert said he’d work on putting together information to give the county more detail but noted that in some cases it was difficult to predict spending.
“We don’t know now what’s going to break next December,” he said. “I don’t have that budget detail … I can tell you what we think we might spend but I don’t know what we’re going to replace.”
The board agreed to have Tolbert and Taylor meet with county officials and to have them provide the school board with whatever information they provided to the county.
