Be Positive

I promise to be positive. I promise to be positive. I promise to be positive.
The May meeting of your school board has been moved to the 27th. Regularly scheduled for the fourth Monday, the 25th, that is a holiday. Moved back to accommodate the holiday we found it crowded too many reports that must be prepared and presented at this time of year so the date got readjusted.
This is the meeting where your board will be presented with one of the mandated twice-yearly five-year forecasts. This one will be particularly challenging.
It seems the folks in Columbus are still wrangling over a number of details that would impact our local budget over the next five years. Yet they demand we come up with the forecast and hold us accountable.
Treasurer Combs wrestles with this report every time as a 1 or 2% deviation can cause the board to take action and cut programs and lay off employees. People’s careers hang in the balance.
What originally looked like a federal stimulus cash injection to our biennium budget of 15% followed by 14% shrank under the eraser of the legislators to 8% followed by minus 2% and now looks as though it may disappear altogether. How’s that for solid input on which to plan?
But there’s more. And none of it is encouraging. And some of it may cost us money while some of it may mean yet more unfunded mandates. Things we must do and figure out on our own how to pay for them.
One of the exciting mandates in an earlier version of the legislation called for having a nurse in every building. Who could argue with that? From a safety and health point of view it would be great.
Two problems at least accompany this inspiration. First, how would we pay for the increase in staffing? And second, Ohio is in a nursing crisis. Where would we find enough nurses to meet the mandate?
Then there is the idea to extend the school year over a ten-year period. More days of school per year. Great idea. Who would like bet that teachers, aides, attendants, bus drivers and our other school year employees will voluntarily add to their work year without seeking additional compensation? I thought not. How will we pay?
But there’s an even more outrageous piece still in the pending legislation. In simple terms that even I understand it says that districts would not be permitted to reduce staff for reasons of insufficient funds.
You read correctly. If a district doesn’t have enough money to pay all its expenses, it could not reduce staff to save money. One must assume other reductions in expenditure would be the only option. Turn out the lights, shut off the water, skip buying any books, things like that.
One wonders just who dreams things like this up and with what background information? Surely someone up there knows that on average over 80% of any district’s budget is spent on personnel expenses. It’s a service business. People provide the service. People insist on being paid!
And rightly so. Even legislators. Though one also wonders if that isn’t a place where we could achieve some much needed savings at both state and federal levels. But that’s a subject for another day.
The bottom line is, your board must approve a 5 year forecast in about two weeks and your treasurer is painstakingly trying to guess it together with more uncertainties than the Kentucky Derby. And there are no winners.
I promise to be positive. I promise to be positive. I promise………