Editor:
A recent editorial in The Aegis on June 15 stated in part, "… Proper financial management does indeed involve some tough choices, but also sensible ones. We're still waiting on the HCPS leadership to come to its collective senses when formulating and enacting their annual budget."
The Harford County Public Schools budget process is antiquated, broken and needs fixing. The school administration leadership should do the right thing by giving serious consideration to changing the process.
A good start would be to accept the recommendation in the Harford County Audit Office. The audit office's Fiscal Impact Note on the school system's proposed budget for FY 2017 stated:
"The budget prepared by HCPS is an incremental budget – it provides explanations for changes from the prior year budget and assumes that the prior year budget amounts are acceptable. We strongly recommend that the schools prepare a zero-based budget to demonstrate the specific programs, services and staffing levels that are needed. A zero-based budget would provide justification for all requests, not just the changes from the prior year. This budgeting approach would require officials to identify the actual costs of each program and service provided."
HCPS fiscal managers should do things right by acting on the county recommendations and those made by the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits. As far back as 2008 the Maryland OLA listed 23 detailed recommendations for improving the fiscal management of the school system. But, seven years later, OLA's 2015 report stated:
"We followed up on these 23 findings based on our current assessment of significance and risk relative to the audit objectives. We determined that HCPS satisfactorily addressed 13 of these findings. The remaining 10 findings are repeated as 9 findings in this report."
Somehow over the years HCPS officials seem to have forgotten that the 250,025 citizens in Harford County own the schools. These stakeholders expect the well-paid administrators to show leadership, make changes for improvement and manage fiscally responsibly. To paraphrase a worn out quote of Albert Einstein, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results just doesn't make any sense.
It is time to change.
John E. Barham
Board Member
New Harford Democratic Club
Forest Hill