Referendum Budget and School Closings

From: Thomas Mertz
Subject: Referendum Budget and School Closings

A group of parents and community members are working to convince the Board not to close schools or make other nearly irreversible cuts before offering the voters a chance to pass an operating referendum. You can help. More details here.

Please follow the link, read and sign on.

----------------------
I gave the effort my support with this message:

I’ll sign on.

You make an excellent point that the board should not cut those things that will be difficult to restore. Freezing the business services budget could save more than $2 million. If the MMSD would get a miraculous windfall from the pending state budget, some or all of the cuts could be restored. If a school closes, it’s not going to reopen no matter how much money might fall from the sky.

However, the MMSD still needs a better budget process that doesn’t start with weeks of agonizing over school closings and then a few days to analyze the actual budget where other cost savings might be found.

The MMSD also needs a five-year plan for what MMSD education should be and how it should be financed. The MMSD has no guarantee that state school aid financing will be any different three years from now. If it’s no different, what then? Another multi-year referendum?

Ed

Posted by Ed Blume at April 13, 2007 7:49 PM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas