Budget Crisis Déjà Vu

As we all know, the Baltimore City School System has its issues, some easier to fix then others. I joined Teach For America after college and ranked the Baltimore region as my first pick because I wanted to do my part to help and close the achievement gap and to help every child in the city of Baltimore to have the chance to attain an excellent education. When I came here I happily found many others that were here to do the very same thing and everyday put their heart, soul, and energy into making this happen from their end. It is great to see others that will put their lives on hold to help a child have the chance to learn and to grow. AND THEN THERE IS NORTH AVENUE…

Now, I am not saying that the wonderful people that work at North Avenue do not care about the students of Baltimore City Public Schools, but it seems to be the most disorganized and mismanaged place that I have ever seen. Ask any teacher that has needed to go down to the lovely headquarters of Baltimore City Public Schools to get anything done, they will most likely tell you that it was one of the most frustrating experiences of their lives. My personal experiences there have been so incredibly frustrating, that I have left almost hours later with nothing accomplished. I can handle mismanagement to a point, but there is a time when someone needs to step up and get everything under control, and that is not happening at North Avenue.

The latest budget madness is enough to drive anyone crazy! Baltimore City has been through so much in the past couple of years… To refresh your memory: The school system was sinking into what ultimately would become a $58 million deficit, it was laying off hundreds of staff that it could no longer afford to pay, and its top administrators were resigning right and left. One would think that the powers that be would take every precaution from here on out to make sure that their budgets were correct….think again. You don't have to do the math to see the problem with those and other entries in the breathtakingly inept budget prepared by the Baltimore City public school system's administrators - and somehow unanimously approved by the school board! How does this happen?

Did anyone on North Avenue read, for example, the clearheaded report issued in 2003 by a blue-ribbon panel of business and educational leaders, who had been asked to rescue the school system from fiscal chaos?

City and school officials sent an SOS to two business groups, the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Presidents' Roundtable, and, after months of review, the groups offered some basic, accounting-for-dummies advice: Start working on the budget earlier, stick to it, closely track staffing, hold managers accountable for their spending, pay bills on time, etc. It really was that simple - "business management 101," as GBC President Donald C. Fry called it at the time.

And yet now, four years later, the school system has presented a budget that was late, filled with staffing and salary discrepancies and requiring some fairly mind-twisting explanations. Those 187 guidance counselors referred to at the start of the document but never seen again? Oh, they're paid under the "general instruction" category. That $18 million in new initiatives? Actually, they'll cost $31 million. Those phantom employees whose salaries total $6.2 million? They must be the 73 instructional support teachers who, on another page, appear not to be getting paid at all.

One cannot help but get the feeling of déjà vu. It is extremely frustrating to be someone who is working everyday in what I like to call “the trenches” pouring your heart and soul to try and improve the education system in Baltimore City, and the powers that be cannot even take the time to read that important of a document to ensure that Baltimore City is giving it’s students everything that they will need to be successful. We need people at North Avenue that are more business minded when it comes to administrative duties such as preparing budgets and handling HR issues, but they also need to see the children in Baltimore City schools and the needs that they have and what a mismanaged budget can do to the morale of a city school system that is so desperately trying to improve itself for the betterment of the students.