Board of Ed budget...14 million in rainy fund!

[foodcritic]

And they want more money in this years budget!

The very well paid (180k?)superintendent said at the last SMCC budget meeting that when it comes to the edukation of our kids you "get what you pay for" really?

Does anyone know a study that directly correlates the amount of money spent to quality education.? I don't.

Skool administrators have been operating like speculators as every year budgets have increased. As the housing market has shown, not everything can go up for ever......unless it's your publik skool's budget. Don't question or ask for a budget to stay the same or even fund a little less with out threats that jonny,tyree and jill won't be able to read ( not that they do that well anyway).

Skool admins complained that the state was spending less on St Mary's Co then the other counties. Checking I found the difference to be only a few dollars per student. Not enough to make a difference in education. For the record the "county" that spends the most on edukation is ........drum roll..............Baltimore City almost 14,000. per PUPIL. Wow. Now that's an edukation!

I suggest looking at some facts here. Teacher per student ratios are at all time lows
Education Spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act | The Heritage Foundation


If you want to see why spending more won't necessarily get you more...
Spreading the Education Spending Fallacy | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.


http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/ReportCard08.pdf

St. Marys County Public Schools | FEBP

[awpitt]

Just curious… Do you have kids in SMCPS? If so, are you involved in the schools beyond putting your kids on the bus? I’m no fan of spending more money on the schools just for the sake of getting a higher ranking of per pupil spending but the current “maintenance of effort” spending levels can’t continue. The SMCPS has been able to keep things fairly steady because of the reserve fund that Dr M has been saving up for since he came on board. BTW, it’s not $14million. It’s more like 5 or 6 million because it has been used to make up for shortfalls in federal, state, and county funding towards the school system. Your Website references are out of date/inaccurate. If the federal, state, and county funding trends continue, SMCPS will see teacher layoffs and class sizes of 38+ students. Our school system has improved a great deal over the past few years. Part of that improvement is a result of financial commitments. Yes, you do get what you pay for. It’s not free. Having the highest per pupil level of spending is not a guarantee of a top rate education; however, the “maintenance of effort” level of spending that the SMCPS is receiving falls short of what’s needed.

The SMC public school system has shown that you can do more with less. To have the system we have for the amount of money we spend per pupil should be a model across the nation. IMO, it shows that people are now actually earning their keep. No need to throw more money at something that ain't broke! As we have seen in this down economy, productivity has gone up in most sectors. As people are fearful for keeping their jobs, they work harder for the same pay, just the way they should have always been doing. In general, the salaries in this county, not only talking about the school system, are way too high for the amount of work that gets done.... JMO...

[glitch]

Originally Posted by foodcritic

And they want more money in this years budget!

The very well paid (180k?)superintendent said at the last SMCC budget meeting that when it comes to the edukation of our kids you "get what you pay for" really?

Does anyone know a study that directly correlates the amount of money spent to quality education.? I don't.

Skool administrators have been operating like speculators as every year budgets have increased. As the housing market has shown, not everything can go up for ever......unless it's your publik skool's budget. Don't question or ask for a budget to stay the same or even fund a little less with out threats that jonny,tyree and jill won't be able to read ( not that they do that well anyway).

Skool admins complained that the state was spending less on St Mary's Co then the other counties. Checking I found the difference to be only a few dollars per student. Not enough to make a difference in education. For the record the "county" that spends the most on edukation is ........drum roll..............Baltimore City almost 14,000. per PUPIL. Wow. Now that's an edukation!

I suggest looking at some facts here. Teacher per student ratios are at all time lows
Education Spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act | The Heritage Foundation


If you want to see why spending more won't necessarily get you more...
Spreading the Education Spending Fallacy | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.


http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/ReportCard08.pdf

St. Marys County Public Schools | FEBP

Spoken like someone who hasn't a clue what they're talking about.

[awpitt]

Originally Posted by shagger

The SMC public school system has shown that you can do more with less. To have the system we have for the amount of money we spend per pupil should be a model across the nation. IMO, it shows that people are now actually earning their keep. No need to throw more money at something that ain't broke! As we have seen in this down economy, productivity has gone up in most sectors. As people are fearful for keeping their jobs, they work harder for the same pay, just the way they should have always been doing. In general, the salaries in this county, not only talking about the school system, are way too high for the amount of work that gets done.... JMO...

That is true to an extent. Yes, SMCPS has been able to do more with less; however, the school system has also had to cover the funding gaps by dipping into the “savings account” that was mentioned earlier. Once that dries up, it’s going to be an entirely different situation.

[foodcritic]

Originally Posted by glitch

Spoken like someone who hasn't a clue what they're talking about.

Thanks for putting together a sentence to respond. Quite an accomplishment.

[bohman]

And you'd be surprised how quickly a school system can burn through 14M. It doesn't go as far as you'd think. I have a family member who is a purchasing agent for a MD county BoE, and I was shocked at the size of the overall budget. You have to plan for unforeseen circumstances - their budget got clobbered by heating oil prices when the prices went up a few years ago.