A New Approach to the Budget

There are quite a number of items on tonight's School Board Agenda, but none is as important as item 12.01, Superintendent - School Board Budget Process. This is a major proposed change to the School Board's budget process, and an important one in this budget year. It's important to be clear about what it means and what will happen next.

Virginia state law (22.1-92) reads:

It shall be the duty of each division superintendent to prepare, with the approval of the school board, and submit to the governing body or bodies appropriating funds for the school division, by the date specified in § 15.2-2503, the estimate of the amount of money deemed to be needed during the next fiscal year for the support of the public schools of the school division.

These precise words are taken very seriously. Notice that the superintendent is to prepare and submit the budget, not the school board. Notice that it says nothing about accommodating the financial climate. This section of code is what Superintendent Hatrick is referring to when he says that he will prepare a "needs-based budget."

The code also says that the school board will approve the budget. In previous years, we have followed the sequence of the words: the Superintendent has produced a budget and the Board has reacted to the budget by modifying various line items before final approval.

Tonight's discussion focuses on two changes to the budget process. First, should the Board provide guidance to Superintendent Hatrick prior to his development of the budget, instead of (or in addition to) editing the budget after he has presented it? Second, should the Superintendent follow the request of the Supervisors to provide a range of budgets from 0% to -15% change over prior year?

I'll discuss each of these questions more later in the week, the full Board will discuss them tonight.

This is just an information item tonight... a matter for discussion. No formal action will be taken until November 11th.

DuPree's Integrity

Since this summer when the property problems between the School Board and Board of Supervisors took shape, opponents of acquiring land for new schools have interspersed their arguments with personal allegations against School Board Chairman Robert DuPree.

The insinuation is that Mr. DuPree must be advancing some nefarious agenda at the expense of the community. The occasional personal smear against a colleague is regrettably commonplace in emails and the anonymous comments of local blog sites, and generally not worth a response. In this case I feel it is important to make a statement in no uncertain terms because this particular accusation has now been said often enough, in enough forums, that it is creating its own echoes and they are harmful to the work that both Boards are trying to do.

I have worked with Mr. DuPree very closely these past 18 months. My time on the School Board follows a year in which I witnessed his work on housing issues. I was a founding member of the County's Housing Advisory Board and Mr. DuPree attended some of our meetings and participated in those discussions along with professionals, experts and volunteers of all stripes. I have spent countless hours with Robert DuPree in public meetings, private meetings and private conversations. Based on that experience I can tell you that he is a man whose primary impulse is to serve his community. He & I disagree sometimes on the best way to do that, but there is never any doubt that the community's interest, and not his self interest or that of any interest group, are what drives his positions. Robert DuPree's personal integrity and his credibility as an advocate for public schools are absolutely beyond question and are not an appropriate part of a policy question.

No matter the issue, I find it unhelpful to bring personal allegations into a policy debate. The merits of the case are enough on their own. In this case the allegations are not only superfluous, they are wrong.

Handling a Crisis

As you may have read (LTM, LTM) the Loudoun School community lost a precious life on Sunday morning. The students and staff at Potomac Falls High School are obviously reeling. Everyone is affected by the sudden loss of a young life. So much gone, so quickly, so randomly.

In a system our size, these tragedies happen, and LCPS is prepared for them. I have spoken with PFHS Principal David Spage and with Assitant Principal Doug Fulton. Each spoke highly of the LCPS Crisis Response Team (CRT) which was on hand first thing Monday morning to lend support to the school as a whole and to every adult and child there who might need it.

I don't know much about the CRT, but I know that they are volunteers from across LCPS who are specially trained to help in just this kind of situation. I have heard leaders from other LCPS schools talk about how much support the CRT provides after a tragedy, how it is an almost overwhelming show of support. The CRT can lead discussions in the classroom, roam the halls looking for kids who need some help, talk to parents or fill in for a teacher.

Of course the LCPS community is coming together to support each other, with great help from the guidance staff. The combination is a powerful demonstration of they way that each school is a self-contained close-knit community and yet still a part of the larger family, able to draw on the resources of the full district.

Read more about Crisis Response: National Center for Crisis Management

Culture Clash over Lenah Run

Tomorrow morning at 10AM, the Board of Supervisors will take up the question of whether to approve a special exception for a plot of land south of Rt. 50, and allow a High School and a Middle School to be built there to open in 2010 and 2011, respectively. LCPS already has the money set aside to purchase the site. The price to be paid is 20% under budget. The cost of the work preparing the site for this final approval runs into the millions. The Supervisor's own professional staff has recommended approval. LCPS has conformed with every demand to ensure the site is in compliance. LCPS is already bussing Middle School students out of the area this year and soon the High Schools will overflow. Without the special exception, a school will not be permitted on the site. As of this morning the outlook for the vote doesn't look good.

Our County grows and brings in thousands of new students every year, enough to fill 3-4 new schools every year. This Board of Supervisors is in danger of going a full year without approving a single new school site. The previous Board only budgeted a single site in its final year. This is a form of borrowing against the future, putting off until tomorrow what you should have done today, and making tomorrow's fiscal mountain twice as tall.

At the heart of the matter is a major cultural difference between the two Boards.

The two Boards have different audiences, different focuses. The School Board's mission is to run efficient and effective schools. From our perspective anything that strengthens local public education is a good investment, and past investment is largely responsible for our present success as a great community. The Supervisors are rightly concerned not just with schools but with economic development, infrastructure, social services, public safety and all manner of other concerns. The child-heavy demographics of our community demand school funding at a level that leaves them with little left over to handle all of those other needs.

At a deeper level though, the School Board relies heavily on the advice of its professional staff, which is sensible but too often a crutch. Because of my own confidence in the LCPS staff's judgement it can be too easy to turn my attention to other important things, leaving me in a weak position when it comes to advocating my Board's decisions to the Supervisors and the public. As a group, the Supervisors spend much more time personally digging into the details of a major decision such as this one. This is an admirable work ethic, but comes with the unfortunate side effect of dismissing the important professional advice of their own staff. This is not a trivial point. Past Boards ignoring county staff's advice has resulted in expensive lawsuits such as the one that currently embroils Purcellville over Woodgrove High School.

The School Board can also be isolated by the groups it hears from, which are primarily Parent-Teacher groups. The land-use advocacy groups that fund Supervisors' campaigns and bend their ears perenially ignore the county's largest developer, the School Board. If those groups seek to influence LCPS's land purchasing options, they should start earlier in the process and become familiar with a different group of nine. Their input a year or two ago could have helped our community to avoid the costly head-butting that we are witnessing now.

Unfortunately the Supervisors' role of putting School needs into a broader perspective can veer into a nay-saying obstructionism. A 'no' vote by the Supervisors now is just that, a role gone awry, supported by special interests and personal preferences and not professional counsel and effective government processes.

Notes on a Thursday

So much has been going on that it has been very difficult to keep up, and the demands on my time have kept me from making blog updates. I'll write things for you here in short form, though any one of them really deserves its own post. Let me know in the comments if you'd like more information about any of them given in subsequent posts.

• This week has been all about next year's budget situation. Our joint meeting with the Supervisors on Tuesday went well. It focused on facts and figures, everyone recognizes the gravity of the situation and the importance of working together in a new way. Leesburg Today, Loudoun Extra.
• On Wednesday morning the Supervisors Finance Committee met and decided to recommend that the county spend no more next year than it spent in the current year, and perhaps significantly less. This wouldn't be a big deal if we weren't still growing so fast, and hadn't been cutting it pretty close in our funding levels to begin with. Under this best case scenario (which is still very much subject to change), we'll have the same number of teachers, and the same number of classrooms, and the same number of dollars, with which to teach an anticipated 2,500 extra students.
  
• Last night, LEAP held a budget forum with presentations by LCPS CFO Leigh Burden and the County's Deputy CFO, Ben Mays. Supervsiors Burton and Kurtz, along with School Board members Tom Reed, Priscilla Godfrey and myself were part of a panel which spoke and answered questions as well. In the audience were Chairman Robert DuPree, members Tom Marshall and Warren Geurin and Andrea McGimsey. Superintendent Hatrick spoke as well. I was surprised after the meeting was over that the parents did not seem alarmed by the budget outlook judging by their questions and the post-meeting conversations. "Wait until they see the impact" was the comment of another board member this morning.
• Speaking of LEAP, they have started a new blog of their own, LEAPForLoudoun. I will add it to my link list.
• And speaking of things to add to my link list, I am extremely excited by the Loudoun County Library's LoudounPedia project. I have advocated for months for somebody to start an LCPS wiki for the community to build. The Loudoun Education section of LoudounPedia is exactly that, and I'm already signed up as a contributor.
• Another item going up on my list is the School Board's new electronic document management system. I don't see next week's meeting documents up there yet but I believe it will be soon.
• Virginia is ahead of all other states in tracking true graduation rates among high school students, and Loudoun is tops in the state. Washington Post. Technically we're #2 in the state, but the #1 is Falls Church City which has a total of 1,906 students in a grand total of four schools.

Finally, let me say a few words about the budget process. Members of the School Board and Board of Supervisors are all on task, looking for a way to pilot our community through a couple of very tough years. I am confident that it can be done, but it will require new approaches and an unprecedented degree of cooperation from both boards. Flexibility is key both to facilitate that cooperation and to be prepared for rapidly changing economic conditions.

Community input is key. Let your representatives know what you're willing to give up in terms of programs and services. This is no time to ask for new expenditures or declare anything off limits. Many people will be happy to suggest things that other people should forgo, but that's not nearly so convincing as saying "I will do without, if it will help the community." That's the kind of service that both Barak Obama and John McCain have spoken of throughout the campaign. It's the kind of service they have both exemplified with their lives. We all have an opportunity to follow their example, right now, right here at home.

School Board to Set Goals Tonight

The Loudoun County School board holds a goal-setting session tonight, the first revision to our goals in about three years if I'm not mistaken. There are 36 current goals, and the consensus view (not to mention the opinion of our recent outside efficiency review) is that we need to narrow this down to seven or fewer because more than that becomes unwieldy.

This is an open meeting beginning at 5:30pm.

The rest of this week....

• Tuesday, 6:30 pm, Joint Meeting of Board of Supervisors and School Board regarding FY2010 budget outlook. County Government Center.
  
• Wednesday, 7:30 pm, Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents presentation and Q&A regarding the County Government and LCPS budget process. LCPS Admin Building.
• Thursday, 6pm, LCPS Legislative/Policy committee meets to discuss legislative positions for 2009 Virginia Legislative Assembly. LCPS Admin Building.