In Howard County, the school budgeting process spans six months and includes no fewer than six public forums -- including one before the budget is crafted. In Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, the public gets similar access to the budgeting process, and at least a month to comment before spending is set in stone.

By those standards, public access to Baltimore's school budget process seems woefully inadequate, chief executive officer Robert Booker acknowledged yesterday.

Copies of the proposed fiscal 2000 budget were handed out Tuesday, just hours before the only scheduled public hearing took place. The school board is scheduled to vote on the budget next Tuesday -- just a week after the first proposal was unveiled.

Booker said he will change the process to allow for more public input next year.

This week, parents and community members gave board members an earful about the lack of public input into this year's budget.

Some board members fired back, charging that parents are complaining about being left out of the process, but have been uninterested in boosting more critical areas of parental involvement.

"How can you comment on a budget when you just got it?" asked Michelle Rosenberg, a representative of the League of Women Voters, during Tuesday's hearing. "It's bad enough when our group doesn't see the budget. It's ridiculous when the parent-community advisory board doesn't get one."

Board chairman Tyson Tildon countered: "We need parents to read to their kids at night and do math [with] them, and so far I give you guys an 'F' for that."

"We understand we need more parental participation in decision-making, but it's more important for us to get it at the school level, and that's where it's not happening," Tildon continued.

Tildon said promises from Baltimore Education Network, the faith community and others to boost parental involvement have proven empty. Despite public forums and other efforts to engage parents, nothing has changed, he said.

"At the beginning of this year, the faith community told us they were going to get 25,000 new parents involved. We haven't seen 25," Tildon said. "So from now on, I'm going to watch what they do, not what they say."

Eight people showed up to comment on the budget Tuesday, and almost every speaker criticized the board for not seeking more public input.

"Thirty minutes of public comments is not public engagement," said Christie Cosby, a co-sponsor of the Baltimore Education Network. "I don't understand how that accomplishes anything."

Laura Weeldryer, education director at Advocates for Children and Youth, said board members' insistence that they will hear more public comments before voting next Tuesday made little sense.

"There's no point in commenting the same night as the vote," she said. "Your minds will already have been made up."

Tildon asked the speakers to gather as much public comment as they could and submit it to the board in writing. He and other board members also said the public has had plenty of opportunity to comment on items in the budget, if not on the budget itself.

"Our budget is really just about our master plan," Tildon said, referring to the five-year blueprint the board has created for school reform. "The public was instrumental in crafting the master plan, so really they've helped with this budget, too. It's not like we have a lot of discretionary money. Our plan is already set."

Tildon said other counties that have more arduous public budget processes haven't undergone the same changes that have taken place in Baltimore's schools.

"They don't have master plans like we do," he said.

But Bebe Verdery, education reform director of the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union, said the public deserves more input into the budget.

"We need more information in the beginning to be able to determine if these things in the budget are the right things," Verdery said. "The cart seems to be before the horse. The program decisions need to be made before the budget is submitted, and the public needs to be part of that process."

Pub Date: 3/25/99