By Adam Pagnucco.
In an amazing response to Council President Evan Glass’s op-ed calling for more transparency and accountability in MCPS’s budget, the school board has cited its own demographics as well as the superintendent’s to push back. I have been watching MCPS for 17 years and I have never seen anything like it.
Glass’s rather mild op-ed called for non-specific improvements to MCPS’s funding process. He stated:
As local jurisdictions begin preparing to implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a statewide effort to transform public education into a world-class system, we must rethink how school budgets are funded.
One way to reimagine the process would be to change the state law and allow more transparency for policymakers and residents to see how their tax dollars are being spent. County officials and taxpayers deserve to see how funds are being allocated.
We need our leaders in Annapolis to work with county governments and school systems across the state to strengthen our ability to provide oversight and accountability. Providing us the authority to further open the school system’s fiscal books would be a good place to start.
The school board responded that MCPS was indeed transparent and had won awards for its financial reporting. Fair enough. But then they said this:
Given this proven track record, we find it curious that an excellent school system with a highly diverse, all-female Board of Education (with the exception of the student member), duly elected by the residents of Montgomery County, led by the first appointed African American female superintendent, now somehow needs greater oversight and accountability for the management of its budget, spending and operations.
That takes a lot of gall considering that the county council has a female majority and that eight of its eleven members are women, people of color or both.
The school board’s response brings back awful memories of the last huge rift between the council and MCPS, when former Superintendent Jerry Weast threatened to sue the county in 2010. That kicked off years of poor relations between the council and the school system which had serious consequences for MCPS’s budget. Weast may have jumped the shark, but at least he was arguing about money and not accusing the council of racism or sexism.
So what should we make of the school board’s pushback? It’s true that they post their budgets and comprehensive annual financial reports online. Their Schools at a Glance series is excellent, though I wish they would release that data in spreadsheet form. Their open data site needs work – just compare it to the much more voluminous county government open data site. Overall, they release enough financial information for me to do some broad analysis. That’s how I found out about their underfunding and transfers of instructional salaries and their accumulation of huge fund balances, issues whose causes have not yet been established.
But they do have issues with transparency. I will provide three recent examples.
1. When I asked about the termination of a promising literacy pilot, MCPS’s communications department provided a non-responsive response. I was able to find out what happened only by asking the contractor.
2. When MCPS and its unions signed a joint letter warning the council about reductions to the executive’s school budget request, I asked MCPS for a copy. I received no response at all despite the fact that it was a public document on MCPS letterhead signed by the school board president and the superintendent. I eventually obtained it from another source.
3. When the inspector general found that MCPS had racked up more than 1,600 traffic citations in eight years and was using school system purchase cards to pay them, MCPS Chief Operating Officer M. Brian Hull issued a response that did not address the underlying problems. The inspector general wrote:
Mr. Hull’s response does not address the OIG’s concern that MCPS lacks written policies or procedures governing the management of citations throughout the agency, and that an absence of formal policy caused processing errors, resulted in unpaid reimbursements by employees, and contributed to duplicate payments. The response also does not address the OIG’s recommendation that MCPS should evaluate the underlying causes of citations received by employees and take steps to remediate contributing factors.
It’s one thing to blow off a bass guitarist from Woodstock, NY who writes things on the internet. It’s quite another to blow off the inspector general, who is empowered by state and county law to oversee MCPS.
Look, school board members. It’s regular operating procedure for government agencies to accept oversight from the folks who fund them. Federal agencies accept oversight from Congress. State agencies accept oversight from the General Assembly. And entities receiving county money should accept oversight from the county council. Playing the race and sex cards will only infuriate the council and look terrible to the public.
So stop being defensive, start answering the council’s questions and get back to work.