The Taxpayers League is pleased to have this opportunity to suggest items for the legislative platform. We are a 501(C)3 nonpartisan, non-profit group of volunteers who believe making the education budget strategic is the highest County budget priority.
We believe MCPS has a management, not a money problem and want legislative priorities that are concrete ways to achieve cost-effective results with better management authority. But, last year’s record budget increased spending above the MoE level and didn’t detail strategies (“accelerators”) for academic performance improvement. Those strategies were buried in base spending which is routinely approved while a record number of kids continue to struggle. Also, in light of the Beidleman fiasco, we don’t understand why a high percentage of low-income HS principals are novices at HS management. Shared Accountability has failed.
We have worked with every Superintendent beginning with Jerry Weast. Our specific focus has been on kids below grade level in low- income schools and the achievement gap. We worked with Superintendent Smith to resurrect strategic planning and focus the budget process on results. We strongly believe all spending above the MoE level should be focused on reaching academic proficiency targets, with annual targets set for low-income kids. We have three top legislative platform priorities:
1. Dedicated OIG- reporting to the Board (unlike the new OIG at PG county schools) to strengthen governance and management of fraud, waste, and abuse. The OIG at the county level undermines Board governance authority, has inherent scope limitations as an outsider for standard reviews and follow-up, and reports to a Council that has conflicts of interest. There are hundreds of key internal controls over management operations, compliance, and financial risks, which haven’t been documented, reviewed by management, or independently tested. An opinion on internal control effectiveness is missing from the outside auditor’s report, and the State’s six-year audit flyby is too infrequent and narrowly scoped to be helpful. The last OIG reports on the Beidleman fiasco and bus contract were too narrow and had no corrective actions. The new OIG should incorporate the internal control function that now reports to the Board, as was done when the WSSC OIG was established.
2. Budget Shifts- state authority to shift spending among budget categories as quarterly performance of strategies dictates. This includes flexibility for overhead spending that adds the most value, as well as shifts between academic strategies that work the best.
3. Blueprint Strategy Focus- Aligning Blueprint strategies and funding with academic achievement targets that MCPS sets for low-income students. The state approved plan for MCPS must differentiate the needs of low-income students from others, and place them above other students. Funding of low-income neighborhood Pre-K providers, and support for Charter schools to replace chronically failing schools are two examples.
Management of the state partnership should be a compliance effort not a substitute for strategic planning and solid execution. $3.3 billion is a lot of money and yet low-income student proficiency has stagnated. A new organizational model that streamlines MCPS for high performance is needed, starting by elevating the role and responsibility of principals for designing and implementing key elements of the strategic plan. This has to start by recognizing MCPS is made up of two school systems not one: east and west county. Yet MCPS has uniform budget practices, and policies for both that appear to be written more for west county schools for parent communications, compensation, and performance evaluation. Static management practices may work better in west county, while a more decentralized approach is needed in east county.
In order for the District plan to work it must build on individual school improvement plans. The District plan has hit a wall and substitutes aspirational proficiency targets for aggregated SIP targets, and is still based on school formula budgets with no budget incentives for improved performance. For example, a few years ago we shared with HR Chief Nixon our education consultant’s recommendations for ways extra duty compensation can be improved and assistant principals increased in low-income schools to improve performance. Since then, MCPS has turned over management several times and approved gigantic across the board pay raises that don’t take into account the specific needs of low-income schools. We’ve also recommended awards from a school innovation fund to pay for new school strategies that will incentivize performance.
You are working hard on a budget for release in December. We strongly hope it’s better than last year’s budget whose “accelerators” didn’t include any discussion of interventions or tutoring. At a minimum we want to see details on how many will be performed, what percent of struggling kids that incudes, how much their proficiency will improve next year, and what percentage of their parents will be communicated with by teachers to enroll students in interventions and tutoring.
We support the Black and Brown Coalition’s policy recommendations for eliminating barriers to academic performance improvements, including effective principals and teachers in low income schools, and have proposed reforms for compensation to improve recruitment and retention of the best, as well as budget performance incentives, parent communications and accelerated interventions and tutoring. Having 40% of low-income HSs run by novice principals is unacceptable. Novice principals and teachers belong in west county schools.
Overhead of 45% for non- instruction (teachers and para educators are instruction) vs. 37% for Fairfax wastes money that should be directed at closing the achievement gap. As part of the budget process, overhead functions should be reviewed for value added, and trimmed or dropped accordingly. Reallocating overhead spending to instruction will reduce reliance on the States’s strained budget, and diversion of county resources from off-budget school priorities that will cost the County $350 million this year, as well as diversion of county funds from other programs that support low-income families.
Gordie Brenne, Treasurer, Montgomery County Taxpayers League
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