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School Board out of touch
March 30th, 2008, 4:53 pm · 5 Comments · posted by mcazalas
It is not complicated. Three members of the Bay County School Board voted to spend some $9 million the district does not have.
It’s for the kids, you know.
It is not complicated to board members Pat Sabiston and Jon McFatter. Said McFatter after ending up on the losing side of a 3-2 vote: “Once again, this board has chosen to spend money it simply doesn’t have. And Jon McFatter will never support an increase in millage until this board gets control of its spending habits.”
And that’s the nut of it.
Not that we begrudge the children, or think we should do better than having classrooms in the gym, like at Mowat. Nor is it odd that the teachers and administrators want to see the millage upped to accomplish that.
They, as well as anyone, know the futility of asking the board to cut back and find the money in existing revenue streams.
It apparently is not within the capabilities or our existing board members, or at least the three of them (Johnny Brock, Donna Allen and Ginger Littleton) who voted for the expenditure. They’ll tell you it’s not possible, period.
It must have been some black magic afoot over in Okaloosa County when they slimmed things down under the direction of current Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.
We have no fat to trim, Superintendent James McCalister proclaimed during his push for the half-cent sales tax, which failed because voters aren’t as gullible as they used to be and because we are all pinching pennies.
Board members warned folks that the capital outlay millage rate might increase from 1 mill to 2 if the half-cent failed, as if they were doing us a favor with the half-cent tax. They neglected to mention that the capital outlay millage, which is capped at a maximum of 2 mills, sat at exactly 2 mills during most of the life of the half-cent sales tax.
We’ve rehashed ad nauseam the explosive growth of the school district’s budget. It bears repeating: Over a period of five years, the budget grew from $206 million to $375 million in 2007. There is no getting around that fact.
But there’s no fat to be trimmed, they say.
Look around your world. Chances are you know someone who has lost a job or is in danger of doing so. You see the shrinking economy, the empty work sites, the rising gas prices. Chances are good many of you did not get raises last year, did not get the usual raise, did not get a raise that kept pace with inflation or have loved ones who fall into that category.
I have friends who were gainfully employed a year ago now looking for work because of cutbacks forced by the current economy.
Your newspaper is tighter, and we don’t have as many positions as we did a year ago.
Many made less in 2007 than they did in 2006.
Premium cable channels are out at my place, and grocery shopping at Grocery Outlet is, at times, a necessity rather than a blundering attempt to appear frugal.
This is what I see when I look around.
I’m not sure what board members see, but it certainly isn’t their budget growing smaller. They don’t see fewer employees. They don’t see any of the things that we, the people not employed by the government, see daily.
We’re hurting, we’re tired of being told it is OK, or that it is for the children, or that we need to do our part, until we see the school district do its part.
To date, it hasn’t happened. We’re not holding our breath.
How fortunate that Jon McFatter doesn’t want to spend money the district doesn’t have–now. Remember his first action as a newly installed board member was to vote a pay increase for himself.
The Board can mount a big media campaign to get the half cent tax renewed; but, when it comes to telling us what they have done with the huge budget increase of the last 5 years - a time in which they also had the half cent tax - the answer is that it’s all there in the documents for us to find out for ourselves.
Where does your kid go to school? Mine is at Mowat in a fithly, dilapidated gym that is a disgrace. Congragulations to the board members who voted for the repairs instead of trying to get reelected. I hope the millage rate is raised so I can laugh at the idiots who voted against the sales tax.
A moratorium on building ANY new schools must come before repairing existing schools. Any neighborhood that wants a school should be prepared to pay the entire cost of building it. Because the present Superintendent and School Board are all coming to the end of their terms of office, no decision they make should be acted upon. Few if any will be in office next election. School Board members should be required to have at least a Master’s degree in business management and minimum of 15 years of experience in running a multi million dollar company. IF no qualified applicants apply for this part time job, then powers must be removed from the School Board to make them unable to waste money. The Superintendent should have NO SAY in how tax money is spent. The good ole boy/girl system MUST stop or we are going to be bankrupt, if we aren’t already. Free education for all was part of the Founding Fathers plan to ensure no segment of society was kept back due to a lack of education as it was in England. I don’t think state of the art gyms and private schools paid for with public funds were what they had in mind however.
Question — How many professional educator positions are their in the Bay County School System? How many classroom teacher positions are their? If the percentage of non classroom professional educator positions is more than twenty percent, we would seem to have an excessive overhead cost problem. It seems to me, that a one professional educator administrator or supervisor, to ten classroom teachers ratio is an acceptable goal. But what do I know. I am not a “Professional Educator”.
However; I did teach Math of Finance at the college level. The economist, Parkinson said, “The problems will expand to meet the resources available”. He was right!