I find it appalling that the members of the Baltimore City Council have been suspiciously silent on the gross mismanagement and misappropriation of taxpayer money by the Baltimore City School System for years, only recently waking up to the reality of a failed system of education over on North Avenue. ("City Council wants greater oversight of school spending," June 16)
City schools, which remain one of the worst performing systems in the state while receiving the most amount of state aid, have a record of wasteful spending that has witnessed not one, but two, separate occasions in which they allowed for over $50 million to be misspent over the past 12-years. And the latest multi-million deficit, first reported on by The Sun's Erica Green earlier this year, was never once addressed by a single city elected official until recently — once teachers started to be laid off.
Not once did we hear the mayor, City Council president or one of the 14 council members call for an independent audit of a school system that seems to have misspent $70 million, leaving them in an estimated $100 million-plus budget deficit. Yet all the mayor wants to whine about is $12 million the governor didn't give local schools? Why should he allocate more financial resources to a school system with little to no fiscal oversight, which has consistently been a bad steward of taxpayer dollars — especially given the fact that the city' budget shows that local lawmakers spend less than half as much on schools as they do on public safety. Council President Young complains now about that fact, but he has been complicit in this gross negligence, continuously approving a budget that puts prisons ahead of pupils.
If these officials truly wanted fiscal oversight and greater accountability, they would join me and hundreds of other city residents in calling on Governor Larry Hogan to hold city schools accountable by requesting a performance and financial audit of Baltimore City Schools.
Hassan Giordano, Baltimore