9486 in the collection
Schools Struggle To Tame Deficit
Ohanian Comment: This is Maryland but these budget deficits are a sign of the times. And notice that one of the first things to go is small class size.
Don't miss the little item about the computer woes associated with the budget problem--buried toward the end of the article.
It started as a $7.5 million problem.
That's what then-Prince George's County schools chief Iris T. Metts told the school board to expect as a deficit in the system's operating budget last fall. But that was just the beginning: School board members learned last week that the deficit had climbed to $25.5 million.
"We had hoped this time last year that the worst was behind us," board member Robert O. Duncan (Laurel) said during a meeting with budget officials. "We haven't begun to see what the worst is."
Over the past year, the 136,000-student school system's budget woes have grown, forcing new schools chief André J. Hornsby to spend much of his first six months in office trying to control spending. When drafting a budget for the new school year, Hornsby cut $50.5 million from an earlier budget plan, bringing proposed spending down to $1.17 billion. Most of the cuts were in jobs and initiatives such as reducing class sizes. He then set aside $33 million in a reserve fund -- money that was to be spent only to plug any budget gaps that occur.
Four months into the new fiscal year, though, the school system is still running a deficit, partly because the district overspent the amount of money budgeted for full-time salaries. Most of the $33 million reserve is gone.
This comes as the district faces other financial pressures: Negotiations for new contracts with all four of its employee unions have turned contentious over salary issues. And the school system is unsure it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state aid approved by the General Assembly last year. Prince George's stood to gain the most of any of the state's 24 school systems from the landmark Bridge to Excellence legislation, but Gov. Robert L Ehrlich Jr. (R) has since said that the state may not be able to fully fund the initiative.
"We're not very happy," said board member Dean Sirjue (Bowie). "I'm not very happy. We continue to face the same problem. I would like for it to end and for us to have reliable data."
Prince George's is not the only Maryland school district facing questions about its fiscal management. The Baltimore school system accumulated a $52 million deficit over several years, and school officials there gave layoff notices to more than 700 full-time and temporary employees this week in an effort to stave off bankruptcy.
"Do I believe our situation is as serious as Baltimore city? Possibly," Hornsby said.
Yet Hornsby stopped short of saying he would take measures as drastic as those taken in Baltimore. There's no need to lay off employees in Prince George's, he said, because he has already left 500 to 600 vacant positions unfilled.
The budget crisis began in October 2002, when Metts told board members that the school system had overspent its $1 billion budget for fiscal 2002 by $7.5 million. That figure later ballooned to $15 million, putting a strain on Metts's relationship with the school board. Board members criticized her for not knowing the full extent of the problem sooner. In February, she decided against seeking another term as schools chief, taking a job at a national charter school management company instead.
Enter Hornsby, the former superintendent of schools in Yonkers, N.Y., who arrived in Prince George's in June. With Metts and the top administrators in her finance office gone, Hornsby set about trying to fix the problem. Since taking over, however, he has discovered shortfalls in other accounts besides the operating budget, such as the health insurance fund.
"I keep rolling up all these deficits, and they're not mine," he said. "These deficits existed before I came here."
School board members said they support him. "That's something that Hornsby has inherited," Duncan said. "It's something you can't get resolved overnight."
Still, the fiscal problems have irked the board members.
"That's just unacceptable," said board member Judy Mickens-Murray (Upper Marlboro) at a Nov. 17 budget meeting. "There's no way we can run an organization this way. There's no way."
Making matters worse is that a new computerized accounting system has not helped officials keep better track of spending. The system, developed by the California-based Oracle Corp., has not been working properly, officials said. Oracle has promised to fix the problem.
"This board cannot continue down this path," Mickens-Murrary said. "We cannot make good decisions on bad information."
— Nancy Trejos
Schools Struggle To Tame Deficit In Pr. George's
Washington Post
2003-11-27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16625-2003Nov26.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
