Smoke and Mirrors?

The Bertie County Public Schools, with the approval of the Board of Education (BOE), presented its budget to the County Commissioners on Thursday May 18th, 2006. As previously reported here, Dr. Collins-Hart requested a nearly doubling of the contribution from the tax payers of Bertie County over last year's contribution. The only dissent from the budget request was Melinda Eure. However because she simply abstained rather than vote against the budget, BOE rules counted it as a vote in favor anyway, so they claim this is a unanimous budget request.

Though Bertie County Public Schools will have over 100 less students and with two schools being closed, hypothetically to save money and reduce staff needs, Bertie County Public Schools nevertheless feels they need $1.54 million more money and feel they cannot continue to educate our children without adding several new positions to their staff (the majority of which are not slated for the classroom). This continues the BOE insistence that throwing more money at our problems will someday result in improvement. So far this has not worked.

The budget request did not in any way indicate or acknowledge the significantly larger funding that Bertie County gets than the majority of counties in North Carolina due to special stipends that put us in the top in money spent, while our performance continues to be at the bottom. How would we educate our children if we simply got the same amount of money as most other North Carolina counties?

There has been clear evidence that money has been wasted in the past. If the waste has gone away, why are there no savings? Has the waste gone away?

We continue to have a significantly larger central administration than typical counties our size. Why has there been no attempt to move some of this staff into the schools, the starting point for most of the school systems than have dramatically improved their performance?

One significance of the request is that all numbers in the report to justify the budget increase are calculated numbers. However there is not detail in the budet that allows anyone to independently verify the calculations. Therefore, the claim that they need $1.54 million more is really based on a request to TRUST the BOE. Do you trust the BOE?

Bertie County is a poor county. It is time the BOE stopped simply throwing money at problems and exercized some fiscal discipline. Until then, our County Commissioners should dramatically reduce this request to something reasonable. That will benefit the tax payers and our children.