Summoned back from summer break, the House on Tuesday pushed through an emergency $26 billion jobs bill that Democrats said would save 300,000 teachers, police and others from election-year layoffs. President Barack Obama immediately signed it into law.What does this mean for Loudoun? That depends in some part on the actions of our state government and legislature.
According to information I received this morning, "The preliminary funding allocation for Virginia, pending final verification, is estimated at $249.5 million." Virginia may set aside up to $5 million of that as an administrative set aside. Within Virginia, the funds must be distributed either according to the standard formula used to distribute state education funds to local districts (the Local Composite Index) or according to how much Title 1A federal funding each district gets, which is based on their concentration of low-income families. I'm going out on a limb a bit to guess that Loudoun would get more money under the LCI formula than the Title 1 formula.
The money may be used for salaries, benefits and support services necessary to retain existing employees, rehire former employees or hire new employees. They may not be used for administrative expenses or non-educational services.
In order to receive these funds, the School Board will need to revise its current-year budget and seek appropriation from the Board of Supervisors of the federal funds.
There are still other details to be determined by the US Department of Education, but those are the basics.
Before we keep throwing more money against the budget wall, hoping it will stick to and somehow solve our "budget problems," we need to first address those issues realistically and responsibly. The past couple budget seasons demonstrate — if nothing else — an increasing rift among the two control groups, the Board of Supervisors and the Board of Education, with the taxpayers and consumers caught in the middle of a growing sea of mis- and distrust.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear that a significant segment of our community does not trust the school system to spend funds without greater oversight and transparency, as evidenced by the increasingly rancorous budget processes of the past couple years. On the other end of the revenue funnel, it's clear the district's administration does not trust the governing boards to be more involved in the actual management of the schools, whether out of distrust or territoriality — or both.
Until these basic, significant issues are resolved, accepting additional funding like this from the Feds is like putting lipstick on a pig: what's the point?
Especially, when this "bailout" is totally unnecessary. Neal McCluskey at the Cato Institute points out: "[T]here is zero need for a bailout. For one thing, 300,000 employees — the absolute worst-case unemployment scenario — isn’t all that big a chunk of a public schooling system that employs over 6 million people. Moreover, we’ve had huge increases in spending and staffing over the last several decades but no real improvements in academic outcomes. If anything, then, we have way too much fat in public schooling and should be looking to make even bigger cuts, giving taxpayers sizable breaks they could use to get the economy really humming again."
Our school district's administration, teachers, and both boards need to first focus on actually running the system efficiently with a focus on meaningful and measurable goals before throwing more of our money at political "problems." They need to start working together and, gee, actually trusting each other. Otherwise, "solving" our "budget issues" with funding "solutions" like this really solves nothing — and only continues to delay authentic learning outcomes for our students.
has this school board lost their minds. Yes off topic. but trying to get the furlough days back after many made plans with the schools schedule.
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing but a stupid power play with the BOS and the school board and Hatrick will lose. Now go out there and run the school system without the thought you all have a endless supply of money.
The school board is only trying to restore the pay that the school staff would lose with furlough days. If you can't change your plans, then your little darlings will have to miss a few days of school. Maybe you should home-school if you can't be flexible enough to tolerate a change in the school calendar.
ReplyDeleteLast winter we missed about 12 days due to snow, none of which were made up. The primary excuse given by the administration and school board was they didn't want to disrupt family plans and LCPS exceeded the state minimum calendar by 15 days. Now they want to add two days to the school calendar, and spend more money, just to play politics with the BoS and pander to some teachers.
ReplyDeleteWhat a joke.