Carroll County Commissioners Deny Education Being Cut

The president of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners said a proposed $1.9 million decrease in funding for public education for FY2012 is in part due to spending on pricey capital projects and “good education doesn’t equate directly to the number of dollars being spent.”  

Commission President Doug Howard, R-District 5, responding to reports that the board is proposing cutting education funding to allow for a 2.5-cent decrease in property taxes, said the budget change would actually include an increase in spending per child because of declining enrollment.

According to Howard, some of the funding issues with the Board of Education are tied to maintenance of effort--a law requiring counties to provide schools with funding per pupil at a level no less than the prior year.

In FY11, the Board of County Commissioners contributed $164.9 million to the Board of Education operating budget. It is proposing that in FY12 the contribution be reduced to $163 million.

“We have an excellent education system, and people are very passionate about it,” said Howard. “I have four kids in Carroll County public schools and two more who have graduated from them, but there is a belief by some commissioners that we have done some things at the county level--streamlined, cut departments, eliminated positions -- that some feel haven’t been done in the board of education,” Howard said. 

Commissioner Richard Rothschild, R-District 4, was adamant at a budget meeting on April 5 that the board of education go through a process of trimming fat, specifying that some of that excess exists in senior positions within the school system.

Howard reiterated that position in an interview after the meeting.

“Carroll County government went from 13 departments down to 8 and had a couple of director positions that we did away with. I’m not sure they (school system) have gone through that same kind of process at the senior levels,” he said. “All we hear when we talk about cuts is who will be impacted at the library assistant level, teachers. The cuts are equated to folks that we don’t want to see out of work either, but there is a point where there is some streamlining that needs to occur.”

Howard said money has been wasted on capital projects, including overspending on Manchester Valley High School. According to Howard, the county is paying $1.5 million more toward debt service this year as a result of overspending on capital projects. He said he would rather see that money spent on the education operating budget.

“I also believe that good education doesn’t equate directly to the number of dollars being spent,” Howard said. “The county and some of the members on the board of education right now have made the mistake of putting way too much emphasis on the facilities,” including what he called “ornate, ostentatious schools” that cost a lot to build and maintain.

“We should have been putting that money into teachers and staff and technology,” he said. “I know a lot of people who get a really good education in a really ugly rectangular building. If it adds to the quality of education, not aesthetically, but the quality of education, then we consider it. If it doesn’t, we shouldn’t even be considering it all. Now we’re paying for those decisions.”

He suggested that the board of education has to bear some of the responsibility for the budget constraints, adding, “Frankly, I think we would like to see more recognition from the board of education that that’s why we’re dealing with this situation that we’re in.”

In addition to wanting to see the board of education streamline at the administration level, Howard said commissioners are wary of raising the maintenance-of-effort amount for future county budgets.

Increasing the maintenance of effort number this year will inherently put a burden on future budgets that then have to meet the new minimum, he said. Howard explained that even though the commissioners are proposing education funding at $1.9 million less than last year, that is still $22 more per student because enrollment in county schools has declined and is projected to continue doing so for the next several years.

“At this point we’re looking at funding an additional $600,000 beyond the maintenance of effort, which means the maintenance of effort will go up next year,” he said. “Every time we add to it, it adds to what we’ll have to do next year. The maintenance of effort becomes a disincentive; it works against us.”

According to Howard, when the commissioners made their preliminary funding recommendation last week, they were under the impression, based on a discussion with School Superintendent Steve Guthrie, that the state was changing its funding formula, essentially increasing Carroll County’s education funding from the state an additional $1.5 million.

“It looked like there was going to be additional funds of $1.5 million from the state, so in our thinking, that meant the deficit was down to $1 million between where he (Guthrie) needed to be and where we needed to be,” Howard said.

In an email exchange Wednesday, Guthrie explained that the state did, in fact, increase funding but at the same time passed some fees and pension costs back to the counties, essentially eating up a chunk of that money.

“It appears that given the current discussion at the county and the current level of the state funding, we are looking at about $1.5 million more to reduce in the board of education budget,” Guthrie said.

Education funding was briefly revisited by the commissioners at a budget work session on Tuesday. Howard and Commissioner Haven Shoemaker, R-District 2, who is on record advocating for more education funding at the last budget meeting, both said they were in favor of increasing education funding by another $400,000 and reducing the proposed property tax decrease to 2 cents as opposed to 2.5 cents. Rothschild and Commissioner Robin Bartlett-Frazier, R-District 1, both said they would not support that.

“My suspicion is that it is going to be a tough sell (changing tax/education funding amounts),” Howard said. “I think it’s the right thing to do, but I do understand the tax issue as well.”

He said the citizens of Carroll County are seeing their government in action in this debate.

“The good thing about this process is that it’s very open. People are watching,” he said. “We will go out to the community and hear from citizens what they want and they may say they want more education funding, or they are happy with the tax decision.”