School Board fiddles while Rome burns | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: It's governmental budget season in Beaufort County for the 2011/2012 fiscal cycle. Thanks to the Beaufort Observer for this article on that process, and the Beaufort County Taxpayer's biggest expenditure.

    The Beaufort County Board of Education apparently just does not get it. They are acting just as they always have been, as if there is no recession and that money continues to grow on trees.

    Faced with a $1.6 trillion deficit, Congress is struggling (well, some in Congress are) with how to cut expenditures to match revenue. And in Raleigh the Elephant in the room is a $3 billion budget deficit. Word is that this will result in cuts being pushed down to local units of government including counties and school boards. Beaufort County has exhausted its reserve account in spite of a tax-rate increase this current fiscal year added on top of revaluation. But our School Board has just adopted a budget proposal that assumes everything is fine...that there will be even more money available next year than there was this year. And this comes in the same meeting that they learn that they are being hit with a $132,240 bill for not having allocated the correct amount to the charter schools over the last few years.

    You can watch it all in the videos below but here's the short version.

    The School Board says it will lose $1,773,488 if the state cuts 5% and $3,207,841 if they cut state appropriations by 10%. They are hoping the County Commissioners will pick up most of those cuts. We'll have more on the Current Expense when additional information we have requested has been provided.

    Click here to review the material they received on the state cuts and their impact.

    Most of the time Tuesday night (4-19-11) was spent on the Capital Outlay budget. Capital or capital outlay is the fund that is used to buy assets like land, buildings, major renovations and other things that are expected to last more than a year, as opposed to being consumed in a year like supplies and salaries are.

    The School Board is asking for the same amount in capital outlay as they received this past year and the last four years: $1.5 million. Before you get into the details of this, you need to know and remember that capital outlay funds may, with the approval of the county commissioners, be transferred to Current Expense. That means that "cuts" in current expense that result in the loss of teaching positions, teacher assistants and other personnel costs could be covered by moving money from capital outlay to current expense. The School Board does not propose to do any such transfers.

    You should also remember that this same School Board spent the major portions of its capital outlay budget in recent years for major construction projects, such as additions to Tayloe and a Weight Room at Northside. These were expenditures that could have been postponed but were not. The money's now gone.

    Now we turn to what they propose to spend the $1.5 million for. The link below will allow you to download the Capital Outlay proposed budget which is the document being referred to in the video. Click here to download a copy of the projects in the Capital Outlay budget. As you listen to the project-by-project explanation we would encourage you to ask yourself one simple question: "Could this be delayed?" until the economy improves.



    In the second video you will hear the Q&A and the discussion by the board and eventually the vote...which was unanimous in favor of this $1.5 million spending plan.



    Commentary

    Once again this School Board has shown itself to be totally, completely out of touch with reality. There are 2500 people in Beaufort County unemployed and perhaps as many as 10,000 people underemployed. Most people have not had a significant increase in their incomes for several years now. Yet this board wants to spend MORE money than they have in past years. We find that incredible.

    This is basically the same board, with three exceptions, that overspent the $33 million bond program by $6.4 million and exhausted much of our capital outlay on additional construction projects not included in the bond package approved by the voters, when they could have been spending that money maintaining the schools that they now contend have such dire needs. And remember, this is the same School Board that sat and twiddled their thumbs while Jeff Moss lost over a million dollars in School Food Service in three years.

    But beyond that, look at what they want to spend money for that could very well result in losing teachers and teacher assistants. PA systems/phone upgrades, canopies and soffits to deal with roosting birds, solving a problem (rain) that's been there for fifteen years and a whole host of projects that we have gone years without doing now seem to be more important than teaching positions. We find that amazing. And mark our words, there will be unforeseen emergencies during the year that will cost much more than the $118,000 board member Terry Williams, bless his soul, got them to set aside in "contingency."

    Fortunately, these people don't control the purse strings. We can only hope the County Commissioners will show better judgment than this School Board has in adopting this budget.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.