The Harford County Board of Education approved a $451 million operating budget for the 2015-16 school year on Wednesday night, but not before upping its request for more county funding to almost $29 million, citing further erosion in expected state aid.
"I believe this budget is fiscally responsible and we have asked for what we need for the children and our employees," Superintendent Barbara Canavan declared, just before the board voted, 7-2, to approve the budget. "I will stand behind it 1000 percent."
Less upbeat were the two board members who voted 'no,' Rick Grambo and Robert Frisch, who said the request for additional funding from the county is unrealistic, as did board member James Thornton, who nevertheless joined the majority.
The new budget is about 5.6 percent more than the almost $427 million budget the HCPS is operating with during the current school year and, once again, school leaders are asking the county for money to fund raises for teachers and other employees, something previous county leaders essentially declined to accommodate in five out of the last six budgets.
The new budget has a $16 million pool for salary increases, which are still subject to negotiations with five employee unions. With Monday's approval, the school budget will sit in limbo for the coming months as the county government works up its budget for the next fiscal year. Fifty-six cents of every $1 to be spent in the school budget is expected to come from the county.
Frisch pointed out that in comments County Executive Barry Glassman made just the night before at his town hall meeting on his own budget, the county "is looking at a flat budget; they aren't expecting to receive a lot of additional revenue."
With that, he said, the school administration and board should stop its pattern of asking the county "for increasingly large numbers" and "face realities that even if they wanted to they couldn't come up with $29 million, $33 million."
"We aren't in a position to get that money," Frisch added, saying the board shouldn't keep operating in a vacuum. "It's not realistic that we continually ask for and send over large numbers. We have to be cognizant of other issues out there out of our control."
But while conceding the $252.6 million being requested from the county is indeed "a large number," Board President Nancy Reynolds reminded her colleagues that $12 million of the increase "is just to open the doors, turn on the lights and operate" and another $16 million is the raise pool for employees "who deserve an increase."
"There are no programs, no new positions...it's bare bones," she said.
"These are the basic needs of the system," board member Alysson Krchnavy said. "It's very conservative. To advocate for a lower amount would be a disservice."
Board member Arthur Kaff, who made the motion to approve the budget, said he would have no problem advocating for it to county officials.
"We need to make it clear to the county what the needs of HCPS are," Kaff said. "Our needs are great and we have to have the county executive understand that, and I think he does."
The original budget request Canavan and her staff introduced in December projected a small increase of $400,000 in state revenue; however, based on some changes in how aid formulas are calculated and priorities in the budget submitted earlier in the week by Gov. Larry Hogan, the superintendent's fiscal staff calculated HCPS will get $2.2 million less than in the current year, $191.8 million.
The resulting shortfall of $2.6 million from the original budget was in turn shifted to the request for county funding, which increased from $26.3 million to $28.9 million.
Thornton did not like the presumptuousness of the shift of the lower state revenue over to the county request, saying it went against the notion expressed by the county executive and his colleagues that the county and school system must work in a partnership.
"We face tough choices; we're at the brink with nowhere to turn," he said. "But we are a large organization and no matter how efficient you think you are, there's always ways to be more efficient."
Canavan said she and the staff had "scoured" the spending plan over and over looking for places to save money, and several board members defended those efforts, noting successive years of minimal increases approved by the prior county administration and county council had left HCPS losing more and more ground to other school systems, particularly in the area of teacher salaries.
Board member Thomas Fitzpatrick said counties like Howard and Montgomery spend 63 percent of the operating budgets funding their school systems, while Harford spends 47 percent and said it was "unfair" to the system's 5,000 employees that HCPS continues to be "underfunded by the county."
He and other board members noted Glassman's stated goal to emphasize "human capital" over "bricks and mortar" in his approach to budgeting at the county level.
Board member Cassandra Beverley said teachers no longer want to stay in Harford "when they can go a short distance and make $10,000 a year more," and board member Joseph Hau said Harford teacher salaries "are behind – double digits behind – and it's an issue of parity and fairness."
"Look at this as an investment in our children's future," he said. "$16 million is only a few hundred dollars per household; put forward an investment in our future."