The Fairfax County School Board is facing a severe budget crunch that may require making cuts in order to balance the budget.
School officials have already been told to expect state aid to be reduced by at least $10 million in the current budget year and as much as $20 million in fiscal year 2004.
The School Board is looking for some budget-cutting guidance by creating a citizen's Advisory Committee on the Budget. However, the nonpartisan School Board keeps tripping over party lines.
SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER Mychele Brickner (At large) proposed creating the committee, which would function solely in an advisory capacity much like the board's nine other standing committees, to review and make suggestions on the proposed budget.
Brickner, a Republican-endorsed board member, proposed a 12-member standing panel, with each School Board member getting an appointee, made up of people with either private- or public-sector budgeting experience.
"I feel very strongly that people totally out of the area of schools will look at the budget through different avenues and might come up with things we never thought of," Brickner said. "If we include everyone who is routinely involved, it would dilute it."
In response, Democratic-endorsed Jane Strauss (Dranesville), the finance and budget chair, proposed a 25-member task force, with 12 School Board appointees and the remainder appointed by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Fairfax County Council of PTAs, the Fairfax Federation of Civic Associations, the Fairfax Education Association, the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, the Association of Fairfax Professional Educators, the Fairfax County School Board Employees Association, the three principals associations and the Unified Professional Association.
The chairman of the task force would be selected by the chairman of the School Board. The task force would convene after the state budget is released in January and continue until its adoption in May. The group would issue two reports — the first on the overall budget before its adoption and the second, due in May, addresses long-term issues arising from structural imbalance.
"We need to plumb our communities. A larger task force provides better reach and it's not political because it has people not appointed by us," Strauss said. "We get information back which is unbiased and out of our reach."
After a lengthy debate during an all-day work session Monday, the board was unable to decide how many members should make up the committee and/or task force and tabled the discussion for a future work session agenda. The clock is ticking, however. The next finance and budget work session is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 9. The school system's FY 2004 budget is tentatively scheduled to be presented Jan. 9, 2003.
THE DEBATE followed a familiar path with the Republican-endorsed members — Brickner, Christian Braunlich (Lee), Rita Thompson (At large) and Tessie Wilson (Braddock) — favoring the smaller standing committee.
"We're talking about real experts in the field, CEOs, CFOs, these people exist in Fairfax County and are willing to look at this," Wilson said. "They may come back with something and we may have to say no that won't work in education, but it will be a fresh look."
Braunlich, the only member of the School Board to serve on a previous budget committee, cautioned not to make the same mistakes that were made in the past, saying the county has people with budgetary experience and the board should take advantage of their services.
"Everyone you're talking about [in the task force proposal] comes to the table with their own agendas and want to put forth the views of those they serve," Braunlich said. "This requires us going further than we have before."
The rest of the board — all Democratic-endorsed members — supported the larger task force.
"I don't think its a guarantee that because we have 12 members it will come to better, broader conclusions," said Kathy Smith (Sully).
School Board chairman Stuart Gibson (Hunter Mill) suggested that the student representative should also get to appoint someone to the large task force and said it was important that the task force members have prior knowledge of the educational system.
"One of the problems we had with the [budget] town meetings was people didn't have the background. For example, it was suggested to cut special education across the board, by law we can't do that," Gibson said. "To me if this committee is going to come up with suggestions on how we can do more with less … then they need to have the knowledge up front on how it will impact the school system."
The student representative Matthew Wansley said that if the make-up of the committee came down to party lines, the creditability of the entire committee would be lost. He suggested a compromise, having a 25-member committee with 13 voting members, the School Board appointees.
"We can debate it now or we can debate it until 1 a.m. the day of the vote and if we do that it will be just as Matt said … doomed to fail," Braunlich said. "I'm not suggesting everyone needs to be a CEO or CFO, but if we put this on a short leash, then yeah, they won't come up with anything."