I attended the May 31 school budget free of personal grievance. My property taxes in Farmington are about a third of what they were in New Brunswick, NJ. Thanks social security checks coupled with the generosity and gullibility of New Jersey’s tax payers my annuity income isn’t far short of Superintendent Ward’s salary—and he has to work for his income.
My direct knowledge of the works and days of the SAD 9 School Board comes entirely from Bill Reid, who served on it for several terms. Apart from additional bits and pieces picked up from individual encounters I have to rely on general knowledge of educational administration acquired while working at Middlesex County College for 32 years.
When I visited MCC’s dean of the Liberal Arts Division looking for a teaching job, he offered me the position of assistant dean. He explained that my title would be Administrative Assistant because the college’s leaders didn’t want to worry the Board of Trustees (BoT) about administrative growth. So, I learned an important lesson on my first day. Years later, Joe Klegman, the BoT chairman confirmed and enlarged this lesson. He remarked that the academic leadership treated the Board like mushrooms—“kept in the dark and covered with…” (didn’t quite catch the word, sounded like “spit”).
Naturally this made me curious about the illumination and nourishment of the SAD 9 board members. Bill Reid is much too polite to use any word like “spit” but he had a good deal to say about the impenetrable opacity of the SAD 9 budgets. I can’t say I learned much more at the meeting. Lacking an insider’s view of SAD 9’s crew at work I have to rely for some hints on a SAD 4 Board member I happen to know. Here are excerpts from an LTTE he wrote for
The Eastern Gazette in Dexter.
“Long story short, the number of students has declined drastically leading to drastic CUTS in state aid, leading to six months of work for the budget committee to present a budget that increases spending and raises taxes astronomically.”
“Why can’t the school board get this animal under control? Not too hard to figure out. Civic minded people are cajoled or timidly come forward to serve on a thankless task for $25 a meeting and are immediately put up against an administration with $500,000 in salary and an entrenched bureaucracy to protect. How do you suppose guys from the mill who play touch football on weekends would do if they had to play in the NFL? It wouldn’t be pretty.”
“The members are presented with an incomprehensible budget of 1177 lines, and are enticed into making a series of seemingly innocuous spending decisions that when added up equal the current budget morass. Then the administration “invites” them to “suggest” budget cuts and patiently explains why all of the things that they have voted on before makes it impossible to do so. It is hair-raising to watch members who went in with the highest ideals and who intended to bring fiscal responsibility to the school board be transformed into reliable rubber stamps for the establishment in the course of only a few meetings.”
Are our SAD 9 Board members more independent and better informed that those in SAD 4? Dr. Scott Erb was the most eloquent and persistent defender of the budget in the commentary following Ben Hanstein’s report of the meeting. His observations were indistinguishable from the superintendent’s. This leaves us with no way to determined whether he ever asked a demanding question.
Trustees, corporate boards of directors, school boards, boards of selectmen, etc. are established to represent the constituencies of organizations to the executives that run them. They have a commonly noticed tendency to turn around and represent the executives to the constituencies. At MCC the BoT got all its information from the president and vice president. They came on campus once a month. They never, to my knowledge, built any back-channel information sources. They never publically challenged the MCC administration on its policies and conduct.
One reason I attended the meeting was to support Bill Reid’s proposed amendment; the other was to ask a question of my own. I’d heard a clear and well-organized presentation about the growth of special education programs at SAD 9 at a Rotary breakfast. It left me wondering about the concrete results. So my question on May 31 was what were the tests for success? The Superintendent and board responded with inscrutable expressions. A woman came to the mic to praise the progress of her special needs child. She was applauded. To me that didn’t seem like a complete answer, but the matter was seemingly treated as closed.
Direct and indirect beneficiaries of growing school budgets must have felt well satisfied with the May 31 meeting. Civic-minded people who think spending money on education is just a good thing must have been happy. Anyone with a nature corrupted and soured by the slightest tilt toward skepticism must have felt disappointed.
By John Frary
Farmington
good article Jon.. The school budget is a really huge problem but nobody really cares as they get the right people to keep voting for it.
John:
Siting with a budget in front of you wouldn’t help one bit. They hide expenses, move expenses, explain you can’t cut salaries, benefits etc. of the teachers & employees – they’re off limits. So that leaves just supplies for the kids. Seriously. SUPPLIES FOR KIDS.
Our biggest problem, and one huge expense, is the cost of running that $64 MILLION dollar school. Sure the state paid for a lot of it when it was built.. But what no one factored in was the COST of running the new one. That cost is huge – quite a lot larger than the previous school. (and they want $37,000 for new A/C units)
Gone are mops and pails. The school now cleans floors with a cleaning “Zamboni” because the building is so big. 40 people couldn’t clean it in one night the old way. That is one of many things we had to buy to maintain the building. And fix when it breaks down.
We are paying for the Taj Mahal of Western Maine. In fact, people who haven’t been back to the school since they graduated are absolutely stunned – the multiple athletic fields we never had; the size of the school, and the wasted space. WASTED SPACE that has to be heated and lighted.
Did I mention the budgeted amount for Power for the upcoming budget year is $500,000? I guess the funny little spinning things out in the parking lot are just for looks. I’ve asked, and no one seems to know one way or the other.
And to save water, all the bathrooms have faucets with sensors. Really? Guess kids these days are too busy to turn off a faucet.
Welcome to the Mt. Blue Campus
Great to hear about what all went on in the past, and information learned from a friend. During the three months of budget development meetings, many discussions took place that may help clarify where dollars go. Attending those meetings certainly helped explain where the money is being spent, and why. Lots of details, and lots of time needed to understand a 30+ million dollar budget. Not many people attended most of the meetings, so no surprise why people feel they understand the the explanations.
Some days I do not even understand our own household budget, but after talking with the boss, I know where our money is, and why.
When money is added to the school budget without board approval, then it is hard for the board of directors to do anything about costs. I have followed this show for quite a while, and in the name of education creating jobs is a priority, not educating kids. If the board was interested in educating kids they would raise money in the supply lines for the students so that the teachers would not have to use money out of their own pockets. Just about every position that someone has retired , that replacement seems to get a large raise. When the board finally realizes that the administration works for the board, then maybe things will change.