School officials are always claiming that if they just had more money, oh the good things they could do.
Well, they largely got what they’ve been asking for – demanding, is actually a more accurate description.
With the commissioners’ decision to give them an additional $4 million, they’ve received 97.1 percent of all operating expenses that they requested in their budget submission to the county.
Both the most county money in total (ever) – $57.3 million – and about the highest proportion of funding to request level.
We had been optimistic last year when superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming was hired, and also by his selection of Tony Messer to be his top finance officer.
It seemed that both men might actually be serious about being “more transparent,” which they repeatedly claimed, perhaps more competent, and more attuned to “watching their pennies” in a wide range of other expenditures.
Then, when the superintendent released his budget, which included a brand new a$1.1 million supplement – for so-called classified employees, such as cafeteria workers and bus drivers – we felt, instead, that they were little more than the modern-day equivalents of their predecessors who could waste taxpayer dollars with the best of educrats.
One board member, Seneca Rogers, even claimed that these non-academic employees were so vital that he termed them “basically the backbone of a school.”
Talk about misplaced priorities.
So now we’re going to find out where the current ABSS leadership priorities will be.
If the classified supplement remains a part of the new mix of where money is targeted, it will be the first indication that they’re not really serious about reform or improvement.
They’ll instead be just joining a long procession of bureaucrats whose interest is in protecting and expanding their bureaucracies – not with educational excellence.
As we noted last week, in all the complaining about ABSS funding from the commissioners, absolutely no one among the school system’s dozens of advocates (including school officials, parents, teachers, and run-of-the-mill sign- and banner-holders) has said anything about performance.
Will there be any improvement in student performance?
In individual school performance?
We’d like to hope the hierarchy within the school system would focus on academic excellence and how to support and encourage teachers, including how to instill discipline throughout the school system – an important prerequisite in our judgment to any ability to improve academics (and one of the most-sought reforms teachers consistently say they need).
We’ll soon find out whether ABSS will be able to reverse some of the downward slide.
We’d be glad to see even a glimmer of improvement.
But we guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
