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School budget line items require careful study
Under Connecticut law, only Boards of Education have line-item authority over local school budgets. This prevents other city agencies from injecting partisan political concerns or personal biases into the management of school systems.
Thus, in Norwalk, we have the Common Council setting an overall limit on operational spending for the city, and the Board of Estimate and Taxation, working within that limit, allocating funds to the various departments, including the BOE.
The BET has line-item authority — that is, it can move money from one account to another — for every department, except the BOE. When it comes to the school budget, the BET can only establish a total amount. This arrangement requires all three agencies to cooperate when the city crafts an operating budget.
Ironically, despite state statute, there is an obvious reluctance among BOE members, both present and past, both Democratic and Republican, to carefully examine line items in their operating budget. I first noticed this back in the late 1990s as a member of the council’s Finance Committee.
Each year, during committee discussions with the BOE, I asked for an explanation of a particular line item called “Degree Level Changes.” The spending figures for that account (comprised of funds applied to the salaries of teachers who accumulate additional credits or degrees) never made much sense to me.
Two superintendents and one BOE finance director were unable to explain, to my satisfaction, how that account actually worked. Fortunately, recent budgets include an asterisk next to “Degree Level Changes” that does provide an explanation. I should note that this is a budget line of several hundred thousand dollars. (See page 91 of the current BOE budget book for this line item.)
Members of the BOE were usually present at these Finance Committee meetings, and they, too, seemed perplexed not only by the line item under discussion, but also by my interest in it; a perplexity that might reasonably be construed as the absence of due diligence under state law. Admittedly, the “Degree Level Changes” item was somewhat complicated, but even straightforward budget items require some level of scrutiny.
For instance, virtually every school and central office department has a budget object code 810, called “Dues, Fees and Memberships.” Looking at spending levels by location for the 2007-08 fiscal year does not show a significant change for this item. What does stand out is that Jefferson School, which was transformed into a science magnet, received an infusion of funds for the 2006-07 fiscal year (from $258 to $41,920). Next to the Jefferson line is the explanation: “magnet school expenses — Maritime Aquarium.”
Six of the seven departments that make up the school system’s central office have a separate line for “Dues, Fees, and Memberships.” Like the schools, they do not show a significant change in spending for the current fiscal year.
Examining this line item by location, however, does raise several questions: How are these accounts monitored? Are the amounts excessive? Dues and memberships are clear enough, but what about fees? Are there ways to save money?
Breaking down this object code by location is one way of looking at “Dues, Fees and Memberships.” Another way is to look at the total amount spent by the district for this particular line item. That can be found in the object code section of the budget book. The amount requested for the 2007-2008 fiscal year is $146,645, up from the previous year’s $143,417. Seems fair enough.
But the amount listed for 2006-07 ($143,417) represented an increase of $72,717. Excluding the extra funds needed to make Jefferson a science magnet ($41,662) and a normal increase of about $3,000, leaves roughly $28,000. And indeed, going back to the location section of the budget book shows that many of the schools and central office departments substantially increased the amount spent on “Dues, Fees, and Memberships” for the 2006-07 fiscal year. The question is why and under whose auspices?
This examination of an inconspicuous line item indicates, first and foremost, that there are good reasons for the state to require Boards of Education to exercise line-item authority over budgets. Questions should be raised and answered; taxpayers need to understand and hopefully appreciate the forces driving school budgets ever upwards.
We board members need to accept the responsibility inherent in the state statute that gave us, and only us, authority over each and every line of the school budget.
Bruce Kimmel is a member of the Board of Education.
