The Baltimore County Council approved the operating and capital budgets on May 21, leaving both largely unchanged from the proposal made by the county executive. However, in the course of the Council’s work on the budget, it discovered that Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) had changed the way it determines projected enrollment at its facilities, creating a discrepancy between the numbers the county was using to allocate funding and the ones the school system had generated.
With nearly half - $824 million - of the operating budget and 41.4 percent of the $375 million capital budget going towards schools, Council Chair Cathy Bevins (D-6) expressed concerns about this change in the methodology.
“Recently, BCPS changed the methodology for its 10-year enrollment projections, without consulting or communicating this change to the executive or the County Council,” she said in her Budget Message. “This new methodology changes enrollment projections at many of the county’s schools, which could have ripple effects across the system.”
The county is in the midst of a $1.3-billion, 10-year Schools for Our Future plan aiming to improve existing schools’ facilities and technology and add new seats county-wide to eliminate current and projected overcrowding. Funding for the various programs associated with this plan is allocated based on enrollment projections and other measures, and so “the Administration will need to re-evaulate its previous plans regarding future school construction and additions” based on these new figures, Bevins said in the speech.
BCPS spokesman Mychael Dickerson said that these changes were put into place just this school year. “We implemented this change to be even more accurate and to align with what the state is doing with their projections,” he explained.
County Executive Kevin Kamenetz (D) will ask the Council to approve an additional $50,000 to hire an outside consultant to review the competing methodologies to determine which one is more accurate. It was this expense that most bothered Bevins.
“This is both time and money that could be better spent elsewhere if there had been a more timely flow of information from BCPS,” she said in her speech. “We remind the public school system that it must communicate and cooperate with both branches of county government if the Schools for Our Future program is to be successful.”
Speaking with The East County Times, Bevins admitted, “I guess I didn’t mean to sound quite so accusatory. But 52 cents of every taxpayer dollar goes to the school system, and we don’t really tell them how to spend it. The conversation [about this methodology change] should have happened sooner.”
“We think that this methodology is better, but if they want to take an outside look at it, that’s fine,” Dickerson said.
When asked, neither Bevins nor Dickerson knew whether the BCPS projections were higher or lower than those the county had. The “Recommendations” section of the Council’s Budget Message notes, “Council members have specific concerns about projections for the out-years in particular districts, including in a number of districts that previously showed no official signs of being threatened by overcrowding.”
Bevins also stressed that “we on the Council have a wonderful relationship with the [BCPS] superintendent overall.
“Fifty thousand dollars is not all that much considering the total budget,” she continued, “but it’s something we only have to spend because the administration had one sense of direction where we were going and the schools had another. The changed methodology affects our projections, affects development and where seats will be added. We have a right to know if their projections are different from the county’s.”
No comments:
Post a Comment