For probably as long as our oldest readers can remember, there's been an annual rite of spring in Harford County regarding the public school budget that goes something like this:
School officials approve a budget, before they have completed salary negotiations with employee unions, then send requests for about 50 percent of the budget's funding to the Harford County government. The county executive and county council approve their own budget in late May, at which time school officials know exactly how much of their request for county funding has been approved.
Next, the fun begins. With about a month to go before the end of their budget year on June 30, school officials need to finalize their budget based on the more precise expectations of county and state revenue. Invariably, this will lead to adjustments, typically reductions – the latter a word we'll use only in this instance for illustrative purposes. Often these changes zero in on a specific program here or there, say art instruction, or maybe a service, say student transportation, or if the gap between proposed expenses and anticipated revenue is really big, positions could be eliminated or the employees' negotiated salary increases are reduced.
Usually such deliberations provoke passionate reactions among those directly affected, such has already happened this year with a proposal to drain the system's three indoor pools and terminate the interscholastic swimming program. Parents, students, employees get up in arms, but school officials protest, "Don't blame us, it's those county and state officials' fault for not giving us enough money."
The posturing and chest thumping goes on for a week or two or maybe three, and then summer vacation time comes and everybody more or less moves on to other, more pleasant things.
Perhaps the above explanation sounds like an over-simplification, but it accurately sums up what transpires almost every winter to late spring locally, and in many other Maryland counties. Critics have long argued Maryland's public school funding model is broken in a multitude of ways. Many of these claims have merit and are often advanced by the same elected officials who nevertheless can't find enough collective courage to change things. We've heard much of the same over the years about Maryland's system of property taxation; however, like the school funding system, it too endures.
Regardless of the failures in the funding and budgeting system, the people charged with running and overseeing Harford's school system appear to have a generational need to act like a bunch of pre-schoolers engaged in tit-for-tat. Rather than developing and enacting realistic budgets to start, during which time they work closely with their employees and the elected officials they ultimately depend on for the money, they instead set up this blame game year after year after year.
Keep in mind, that you can't really "cut" a budget you didn't have the money for in the first place. But that's all part of the rhetoric that spews forth as we all get to ride once more on this treadmill of the absurd.
Is there any reason not to expect more of the same next winter and spring. Unfortunately, that's like asking, will Punxsutawney Phil be around on Feb. 2, 2017?