BAC Meeting Monday March 14th

[Chris_Wendt]

High School Cafeteria, 8:00 PM.

It is recommendations time at the BAC.

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

No one had any comments on this particular meeting? How are people feeling about budget development so far?

[Chris_Wendt]

Lilly queried: "How are people feeling about budget development so far?"

There is an axiom, "You don't know what you don't know."

With "you" referring in this case to the corporate Wantagh School District, what they don't know is how to budget in a crisis.

We have seen the draft budget released at a very low starting point, a very good sign. But then we have seen a series of halting spending reductions, and a few spending adds, and even an embarrassing reversal of a significant spending cut. The levels and the number of codes cut so far (through 5 rounds of draft budgets) is a clear indication of two things:

1. There is at least an impetus and an initiative by some in responsible positions to cut more from the budget, and presumably to cut the right budget codes by the right amount of money to achieve a financial target set in response to well-known losses of revenue and known increases in mandated spending areas.

--AND--

2. There is resistance, inertia, and fond attachment to the doing business (and budgeting) the same old "lose-it or lose it" and "spend-and-tax" ways. This resistance, this inertia says: we don't know how to budget in a crisis, we do not know the meaning of the phrase "zero-based budgeting", and, we would not know what a good budget for Wantagh in the face of this crisis would even look like, if it walked into the Administrative Offices and said, "Hi, here I am: your new budget!"

This is a shame, too, because a lot of work has obviously been done, and a lot of time and sweat equity spent on reducing the size of this year's budget, yet, despite that massive investment of human resources, the job has not been done right, the target has been missed, and objective not attained...YET!

I fear there is a false sense of "accomplishment" settling in with the Administration and the school board, that they have gotten low enough that they can propose a contingent-proof budget, and they are therefore "home free". That would be a very wrong position to take at this stage of disaster response.

There cannot be any such thing as "shared pain" if no one is willing, at an executive (or policy-making) level to inflict the necessary amount of pain and apply it in an equitably shared fashion among all the stakeholders of our school district.

If it turns out that the only people left sharing any real pain are going to be the taxpayers, then this entire budgetary exercise will have been in vane.

As far as how I personally feel about the budget, I could not personally support the presently proposed Draft #5 as it stands, even if it represented an equal or lower outcome than a contingent budget would yield.

Speaking plainly,

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

I have a general discomfort level with the draft budget. I don't see broad strategic changes to sustain us through this or the following year(s) which will be as rocky as this one nor solve the unaffordable tax increases at cuts to the kids dilemma. I was just wondering if other people was where I was in that thinking.

On top of that, after unsuccessfully advocating for the arts for a few years now, I am beyond frustrated. They are just 'not getting it' there either. It's not just a matter of 'not telling me what I want to hear'.

I would give the arts presentation a big fat F. I was going to put together a big joke of a post using a Wantagh grading rubric on the presentation but it is too nice a day to spend time doing that. They didn't even look at prior years' BAC recommendations before writing it. So, here's a c&p instead:

* Subject and purpose are not clearly defined;
* Very weak or no support of subject through use of examples, facts, and/or statistics;
* Totally insufficient support for ideas or conclusions. Major ideas left unclear, audience left with no new ideas.
* Fails to increase audience understanding or knowledge of topic.
* Fails to effectively convince the audience.