The D.C. school board’s recent decision to cut short the academic year in order to save on operation expenses in a deficit-ridden year provided an easy target for city politicians. Mayor Anthony Williams immediately called the solution unacceptable. One City Council member called it an outrage. But what to do?
The deficit’s origins are disputed, of course. The school board says the money isn’t there, the mayor and the city council say that the board has failed to make programs more cost-effective.
To be fair to Williams, the inflation-adjusted increase in the school system’s budget is small?about 1.5 percent?but real expenditure for any department just can’t set new records in the next fiscal year: The school system’s budget deficit for the 2001 fiscal year, which ended this past September, was $80 million. This is not enough time to accumulate sizable yearly deficits in the school system, as the District autonomy is just getting off its feet.
A few questions to consider: Is the board honestly saying that these cuts are the least harmful to students it could come up with? Or has the school board deliberately ignored other, less offensive cuts, ones that threaten, say, public sector union interests? Or has the City Council, with full knowledge that it could cut elsewhere in its city-wide budget and reallocate to schools, strategically tried to isolate the board as the collective bad guy? The questions cannot yet be answered, but it would be peculiar if no one had the money to fill the $26 million gap. Is the government claiming that it has allocated all its money in the most cost-effective way? Fat chance.
Somebody hasn’t been completely forthright, and the mayor needs to find out who and reverse the proposed cuts.
What the city needs is an honest broker who can put education first. For some reason, public education, no matter how bad, has not become a consensus issue for city leaders. Seven days won’t make or break an education, but it is this larger question of what is a priority that has to be addressed. That consensus should be, give or take some degree of hyperbole: Come hell or high water, all necessary funds for public education will be found somewhere in the city’s budget. Period.
Why the urgency? Less than 30 percent of 10th and 11th grade students can pass the basic skills exam, and in no grade above seventh did at least half the students pass. The average SAT score for District high schools in 2001 was 819, approximately 200 points below the national average. Some high schools actually average less than 800, the score required to pass.
Fortunately, citizens may now be angry enough to apply real pressure. At a follow-up to October’s Citizen Summit, a gathering convened by the mayor to let citizens run ideas by local elected leaders, District residents voted education the city’s top priority.
As Williams prepares for the 2002 race, he wants to do so as the education mayor. He may still win even if his education record is subpar. But without education, he may have to hang his image a weak and worn hook: that honest fiscal manager who won’t ruin the city. Inspired yet?
