Summer 2009: Council School Budget Performance Shows Lack of Seriousness On Their Part

City Council has veto power over the school budget. They had the power to send this budget back to the school board and tell them to do it right. The Board, by a 4-3 vote, passed a budget that threatened to do great harm to art and music programs that are proven winners for the RCSD, and increased class size, while not sharing the sacrifice at the top. We have too much of this. I voted against this budget, and based on conversations with board colleagues who know more now than they did earlier, I think adjustment would have been made if council had acted in good faith. City Hall and the school board work for the same people. Here was a chance for the two entities to put aside pride, to put aside one-upmanship, and cooperate for the good of kids and taxpayers. What did city council do? After a display of crankiness about rare public scrutiny of their role in the budget process (the Council does not want the public to understand that the school budget is subject to their approval -- it gets in the way of their posturing about the school spending and priorities) -- they approved the budget. Some them said they had no choice, suggesting that their only role was to see whether the budget was balanced or not. Several other colleagues voted no, for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with whether it was balanced. These people can't even keep their lies straight!

Carla Palumbo threatened that future efforts to bring the Council's role in the budget process to public light might result in her favoring abolishment of the public right to elect the school board. Council VP Pritchard, already a voting rights foe, derided the parenting skills of those parents who supported their children in a plea to save good educational programs. It isn't clear what makes Pritchard, of all people, an expert on parenting. All in all it was a pathetic performance by an elected body that has had far too little scrutiny or electoral competition.

Van White bid for City/School cooperation rebuffed in Conklin flip flop

You may recall the harrumphing from City Hall when a joint meeting of the school board and City Council made a rather obvious inquiry into efforts by the city to abolish elected school boards. Some denied supporting that. Others confirmed their support for such. The City had many weeks of advance warning this would come up. The board went through a lengthy public deliberation to decide whether to raise it. The city had also media inquiries in advance. Beyond that, how could it NOT come up? Two elected bodies sit down to forge a better working relationship, and the effort of one body to abolish the other can not be talked about? Give me a break! But City Hall acted like they were blindsided, which is a lie.

It developed that the heart of city discontent was a mandate from Albany that set a floor beneath which city funding for the schools could not fall. Only 17% of city school funds derives from the local tax levy, and is routed through City Hall, but this mandate has given rise to calls for control of the district by City Hall appointments rather than an elected board. City Council already has the power reject school budgets, and never has.

In an effort to be constructive, Commissioner Van White advanced a proposal where Council would establish an education committee, and a board member would have a vote on that, and Council would have two votes on the school board finance committee. Cooperation is advanced. Information is shared. Public voting rights are protected. But City Hall stonewalls.
In fact, Councilmember Carolee Conklin, who won Democratic Committee designation for reelection by promising to support election of the school board, now, in an August 17th interview with the D&C, dismisses White's proposal and suggests that "Mayoral Control" (abolishment of elected school boards) is a better avenue. It is difficult to forge good relationships with other elected officials who simply do not keep their word. At some point voters have to take out the trash, as it were.