Jun 18 2008
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Want More Money to Throw Away
CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman has been huffing and puffing about the $18 million the County Commissioners refused to give him of the $28 million increase he requested for the 2008-09 school year. I’m glad they didn’t cave in to his threats of cutting teachers’ positions and other “programs” (he’s never specific). While I still think that the $10 million they agreed on is too much, they were correct in significantly paring down his request. In his two years as superintendent Gorman has not shown himself to be any agent of change. While he pontificates on how the school board should have their own taxing authority to be able to raise the money they “need”, he and the board have shown themselves to be anything but responsible stewards of the money allocated to them to run the school district.
While Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools faces a budget season that Superintendent Peter Gorman has warned could lead to potentially devastating cuts at the schoolhouse level, the district’s Communications Division engine steams forward, fueled by a nearly $4 million budget and a staff of just less than 30 employees.
The Communications Division is the umbrella group for the district’s Public Information Department, CMS TV3 and the Department of Strategic Partnerships. Since the 2004-05 school year, its budget has more than doubled, exploding from $1.73 million to the 2007-08 adopted budget of $3.57 million.
And it’s not done growing. Under the Communications Division’s proposed 2008-09 budget, its total take would have jumped to a whopping $3.84 million, to include the addition of a so-called World Class Service branch. That proposal got nixed during discussions leading up to the superintendent’s approved budget, when several school board members said the World Class Service expansion was overblown.
This is a perfect example of misplaced priorities and mismanagement of school tax dollars. Why on Earth does CMS need to have a gargantuan budget dedicated to communications? The purpose of the government schools is to supposedly educated peoples’ children so why is a media department taking priority over buses and classrooms? This department has significantly grown under Gorman’s watch.
How much money is spent on CMS’s different programs? There must be close to 100 different departments in the district, many which are not directly related to the basics of education. Are all of these departments even effective at achieving their stated goal? How many administrators and other non-educating personnel are employed and what is the effect of their salary and benefits expenses on the district? My personal favorite is the district employed “Diversity Specialist.” How much money is he drawing in each year to essentially do nothing productive? Shouldn’t the school board be looking at these departments before teachers and buses? These are the questions that need to be asked.
As I noted earlier, Gorman and the school board are pushing to have the state grant them their own taxing authority. Bill James said it best on the consequences of such a decision.
“They hide behind the phrase ‘it’s all for the children,’” James, a Republican, said. “I’m not about to give them taxing authority when they fail to address the core reason for their being, which is to close the achievement gap and produce intelligent, articulate children. CMS isn’t doing that and in my opinion they don’t deserve to be awarded because they can’t be trusted. Giving CMS taxing authority would be a recipe for disaster.”
Precisley. If they can’t succeed now with the billion and a half dollar budget they are currently using why should they be trusted with the power to waste even more money? I’ve lived in areas where school boards have taxing powers and it is exactly the disaster James described. The Pittsburgh Public School system in Pennsylvania has a budget that is higher than the city’s and one third of the students enrolled never end up graduating. They have taxing power and they tax the hell out of the city residents and it makes no difference.
The school district should not be granted this authority under any circumstances. The County Commission needs to be involved to act as a buffer. If the school board is given this authority they will rapidly increase their expenditures which will result in higher taxes that will push residents and businesses out of the city turning a once vibrant town into a run down shell of its former self. It’s already happened to major cities all over this country.
