May 17 (Washington Post) — Thousands of Fairfax County
schools employees are likely to receive raises in January as the
School Board looks to boost lagging morale among the workforce.
As they worked to finalize next year’s $2.5 billion budget
Thursday, School Board members focused on teacher compensation
after recent reports that Fairfax employees have sought jobs in
neighboring districts with higher pay.
“We already look bad,” said School Board member and former
Fairfax teacher Pat Hynes (Hunter Mill). “This business about
Fairfax County not paying its teachers, that is not the story
that Fairfax County wants to tell.”
During a work session that ended late Thursday, the board
members discussed options to fund teacher raises, bus
replacements to the school system’s aging 1,600 vehicle fleet,
and expanding elementary school foreign language instruction.
Board budget committee chair Sandy Evans (Mason) said that
the most dire concern was employee compensation.

Stephen, I couldn’t agree more that the tone of the last round of budget discussions was sometimes frustrating. I have lived in Falls Church and paid taxes for 35 years. Although the allocation of tax revenues between city government and schools has always been subject to robust discussion and disagreement, I do not recall it ever reaching the fever pitch that it reached this year. In recognizing this fact, however, you didn’t fully acknowledge the entire dynamic that was at work. It is an unfortunate omission, and a critical one.

The other side of the “tone” issue is this: Those of us who were legitimately and in good faith concerned with the coming year’s school spending plan and out-year projections, who raised questions and attempted to suggest different ideas about how to seek greater efficiencies and economic security for both schools and city, were repeatedly told that we just “didn’t understand”, that if only we could understand we would see that there was simply no other way, that because we raised questions and made suggestions in all good faith, we were somehow “against” the schools.

Those kinds of assertions unfairly insult the intelligence and malign the motives of citizens who, in fact, do understand and who do support a strong school system but simply seek to better define exactly what constitutes a strong school system and seek a more efficient, cost effective way to achieve it within the realities we face as a city. It’s disrespectful. People talk over each other rather than with each other. The goal becomes to prevail, rather than to seek compromise that might better serve the city. It should not be surprising that the result would be a heightened tone in the debate.

You take issue with language chosen to express concerns, as though there is some universally acceptable vocabulary and overarching agreement as to what words fall outside the bounds of, as you put it, “Wow”. I think reasonable people would agree regarding all parties in this year’s budget discussions, we called ‘em as we saw ‘em.

Particularly puzzling is your criticism of me and others who described the FCCPS strategy as “lobbying”. Call it what you will — a PR campaign, a political campaign, spin, or some other more pleasing term – to many it appeared to be a biased sales effort using taxpayer funded assets. People expect to see one-sided, fact-picked, less than transparent campaigns in an effort to prevail during partisan political campaigns. This kind approach is disappointing and, in my opinion, inappropriate when it pits a subordinate government entity in a partisan way against the superior entity. To some extent this is the story of budgeting in Falls Church – the FCCPS-based interest group traditionally has been a powerful voting bloc that has been successful because of its power to override broader community concerns. It’s not a healthy dynamic, especially at times of budgetary constraints.

That said, it seems to me that community passions were justifiably aroused this budget cycle by the widening realization that the large tax increases and looming $100 million capital budget projection for school construction simply could be unsustainable, perhaps even if Godot finally shows up in the form of dramatically increased commercial revenue. Passions were also aroused, in this context, with what fairly appears to an insufficiently transparent, disciplined budget and spending process that produces seemingly no end of last-minute, unplanned-for school spending opportunities and a demand for a proportional share whenever a few extra dollars show up in the city’s coffers. Some call that a money grab. I don’t – I call it a process in need of improvement. Just like the “tone” of our budget debates, an improvement that will take good will and good faith on all sides.

Thank you for your comment. What I intended to say, and apologies if it was not clear, was that the budget increase wasn’t the 14% figure that was being bandied about. I expressly indicated I wasn’t quarreling with your view, and pointed out that the schools could spend less.

It sounds like you are saying the apples to apples comparison should be 8.6% and not 6.4%. One can certainly argue that is too much, but it remains well below 14%.

Perhaps “raided” wasn’t the best term; I thought about that at the time I was writing. But isn’t it more transparent and a better practice not to use the fund balance as part of annual budgeting?

Stephen

If I understand your Opinion Piece correctly you believe that, among other things, the budget requested/approved was not as large as was made to appear.

However, comparing the growth rate of the School Transfer amount with the growth rate of the total School Division budget is not useful.

More appropriate would be separate comparisons based on: 1) year over changes in the amount of the School Transfers and 2) year over year changes in total School Division budgets. Mixing and matching year over year changes between categories adds statistical “noise”. As you state in your article the total School Division budget includes State and Federal Aid and other revenues which are not included in the City’s Transfer.

It is stated that the FY 2013 total School budget was $38.5 million and will increase to $41 million in FY 2014; a difference of 6.4%. What is not mentioned is that the $38.5 million includes approximately $1 million from a one time School Fund Balance transfer (primarily for Security Fence, two school buses, Kitchen replacement equipment). If that $1 million is removed the percent change increases to about 8.6%. So the use of School Fund Balance which is criticized later in the article is actually used to narrow the growth of the School Budget. Nice touch.

Stephen why do you say that the School Fund Balance was “raided”? None of the funds used went to cover City expenses. The School Division requested the additional resources.

Also, the Fund Balance figures cited do not appear to be correct. Stephen where did you get a beginning 2013 School Fund Balance of $3.8 million? The correct number I believe is $1.46 million. The beginning FY 2014 School Fund Balance is estimated to be approximately $450 k (Please see Schedule 9 page 96 of the City’s 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and page 211 of the Proposed FY 2014 Budget).

What is most telling is that the proposed FY 2014 Budget envisioned the City’s annual budget growing by approximately $5.7 million (from almost $69.3 million to almost $75 million) of which the School Transfer accounted for almost $4.0 million or about 70% of the overall budget increase.

Conclusion: The individual data components (regarding budget growth) used by the School Division are correct but the interpretation based on those data points is not. On one hand the use of the School Fund Balance created a positive outcome by embedding it in a calculation used to show that year over year total budget growth was not particularly large (when compared to the yearly growth in the School Transfer). On the other hand the use of the same School Balance is portrayed as a negative… “necessitating that it will have to be made up elsewhere”.

Ira