Following Wednesday night’s BOE finance committee meeting, I had a great many questions about Corda’s integrity. If you examine his BOE blog, he clearly stated:
The Finance Committee’s chair, Carvin Hilliard, has acknowledged that the proposed increase of 3.8% is not sufficient for the Board of Education to maintain its present level of programming. He acknowledges that cuts would have to be made. Some have argued that the Board should cut administrators. If you have any knowledge about schools and how they get better and you look at our level of administrative staffing, you know cutting administrators does not make sense. Besides, we would have to cut half the administrative staff across schools and central office to manage a reduction of this magnitude. My predecessors, as well as PTO members, have argued for curriculum specialists in order to maintain the quality of our educational program. How can it make sense to go back to the days when there was little monitoring of or focus on instruction and curriculum? Other than cutting administrators, no one on the Council or the Board of Estimate has made suggestions about where reductions could be made.
The Board of Education would be left with the challenge of doing that. We’ve already said there would be program cuts. Why is this so hard to understand or to believe? The money is going to have to come from someplace.
We don’t have to tear this city apart over the school budget and we don’t have to raise the budget by the full $2.8 million and the additional $72 from the taxpayers. Here’s another idea for consideration but the Council and the Finance Director would have to publicly agree to do it:
His statement on the blog goes on to say, “The net impact of these steps is to raise $1.7 million of the needed $2.8 million without impacting taxes at all. We will only need to raise $1.1 million by an increase in taxes. If a $2.8M increase requires $72, then a $1.1 million increase will require about $30 for the average taxpayer.”
So the number he is working to reduce the budget is $2.8 million. Not the $6+ million he spoke of Wednesday night, because he had already gone through a process of removing items from his original budget that were (maybe) proposed increases. Corda has yet to release what the actual expenditures for 2006-07 are. Those numbers are what everyone should be focused on in order to determine what the status quo of public school operations are for real. Corda’s proposed budget, without having context does not clearly identify what is an increase, or new position or program versus what was not. That is essential.
But Corda, in today’s papers, is being disingenuous. He has not proposed to cut any administrator, I was there. He specifically referred to cutting a summer secretarial position that was currently not in place for $30k. And Corda’s continued derision of “nickle and dime-ing” the budget shows exactly how ill equipped he is to prepare a robust and efficient budget. We all nickel and dime our way to savings, either by using coupons, buying items on sale, or turning down the thermostat at night and stretching dollars where we can. Corda apparently does not think this way. That is too bad. He is also not bright enough to figure out that he could get a finance director who does. Imagine to Corda’s surprise if he had someone to work with that could show him how to achieve more bang for the buck on top of managing the budget process for him.
Yesterday Bruce Morris attended the press conference at City Hall for State AG Dick Blumenthal’s current focus on a beverage called “Cocaine.” Morris then went to Hartford. So he was not performing his day job. The BOE continues to pay Morris’ full salary while Morris clearly is not performing his job. A reasonable stance for Corda would be to formally switch Morris to a part time status for the period that Morris works in Hartford. But by refusing to address these “nickle and dime” suggestsions, Corda shows that his budget has no credibility.
There is nothing embarrassing about holding public officials accountable when they have consistently shown that their credibility is suspect. Bruce Kimmel knows this, yet he chose to fire off political statements after reading a letter Mayor Moccia sent to Corda and the BOE. The Norwalk Advocate quoted a part of Moccia’s letter:
“I still believe there are savings that could be made by looking at maintenance accounts, consultant fees, travel and workshop expenses. I want to ensure that before one program or teacher is cut, that we have left no stone unturned in searching for savings in administrative expenses while, at the very minimum, maintaining the current level of service to our students.”
This is much of the same thing that Kimmel said Wednesday night. Which is hardly a unique political perspective. It’s a common sense suggestion and Kimmel knows better. And, as Kimmel realized also Wednesday night, while Corda danced around what the true costs for replacement text books, the BOE finance committee was not given the hard numbers. No one but Corda knows what they are going to pay for the textbooks.
It’s all well and good that there will be yet another meeting of the BOE finance committee, but without a hard look at Corda’s real line items, the BOE finance committee is being kept from looking at the real picture of expense items. Why isn’t the BOE finance committee asking the harder question of why the textbooks are being purchased this year, when the ones they are replacing were purchased only 3 years ago? How devastating is it to wait a year on replacing a bad decision? Shouldn’t decisions have consequences? These are the types of nickel and dime questions that should be asked. Because the decision to buy those textbooks four years ago was made with all the promises of credibility that the “educational specialists” knew what they were doing in changing the curriculum. Corda has yet to account for what when wrong in that process.
But assuming the $260k is not spent on those text books, then Wednesday night’s budget meeting’s $255k shortfall is now closed. While the BOE finance committee spent a great deal of time plotting how to get a special appropriation for that amount, they could have solved the problem on the spot. But then, what do I know, I’m just a blogger who asks a lot of questions.
I do know this. There are probably some legitimate budget expenses that have been incurred by the schools that bear some concern. Unfunded mandates, spiking energy costs are all understandable increases. But only the BOE has line item control of the BOE budget. And without transparency no one in the public knows whether they are acting as responsible stewards of the budget, or lazy stewards of the budget, or worse. The teachers, the parents, the students and the tax payers all are awaiting answers.
