School Board Approves a Strained Budget

Hundreds of Positions Are Cut, and Rainy-Day Fund Is Nearly Drained

After six months of constant debate and twists and turns of fortune, the Prince George's County school system has set a budget for the next year.

In its final meeting of the school year, the Board of Education voted 6 to 2 to approve the $1.7 billion budget proposal late Thursday, averting at the last minute a severe cut in a popular reading program. But the costs and the financial peril the 130,000-student school system could face run deep.

Eight schools are being closed. Nearly 800 positions are being eliminated, and 270 employees are being laid off. An arts program at Berwyn Heights Elementary School that had been the subject of debate is ending, and others are being scaled back.

Most ominously, the school system is using $17.4 million of its $21 million in reserve funds, leaving less than $4 million to deal with the recession.

Members of the Board of Education seemed reluctant to pass the budget. Typically, after hashing out a budget for months, the board votes unanimously to approve it. But as the final vote kicked off, two members voted no, one abstained and three passed, casting their votes only after much sighing.

"I am going to vote against the budget," said board member Pat Fletcher (District 3), a critic of plans to lay off about 120 parent liaisons, who serve as a bridge between principals and the community. "I think the legislators and those who fund us are doing a great disservice to our children, simply because we have to cut so much staff who help us accomplish what we've done."

Fletcher was alluding to the question of whether state and county authorities were adequately funding the school system, an issue that has taken center stage in recent weeks after County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) asked the Maryland State Board of Education whether the county could fund the school system below the minimum level set by state law.

The state board rejected Johnson's request, but Johnson and the County Council found a way to cut $11.8 million from the school system's budget. He has also filed an appeal with the county Circuit Court, asking for a review of the state board's decision.

The school system ended up paying the $11.8 million out of its cash reserves, which have plummeted from about $100 million a few years ago. Many on the school board said $100 million was an excessively large cushion, but members are concerned that the less than $4 million remaining will not be enough if the recession continues next year.

Apart from the dollar figures, the budget for the fiscal year that began yesterday will have a clear impact on the system's primary mission of educating children, a point the more than 20 parents and students who spoke Thursday night made repeatedly.

Kyle Bigelow-Thomas, the Parent Teacher Association president of Rockledge Elementary School in Bowie, rued the loss of a special education teacher, a physical education teacher, a technology coordinator and possibly two classroom teachers under the budget.

"These cuts will increase classroom sizes and result in decreased student performance," she said. "The staff reductions will have a greater impact on the students who are struggling at school."

"Parent liaisons play a crucial role in the success of our children," said Tamika Childs, the Parent Teacher Student Association president at G. James Gholson Middle School in Landover.

The parents who showed up to defend Reading Recovery made the most passionate speeches, many telling stories of how the program had turned their children's lives around. The program helps students who are having trouble learning to read.

Elyce Walker George was on the brink of tears as she talked about her daughter: "She would become very frustrated at reading and would often become angry and just give up" before she started Reading Recovery, she said. After the program, "I could see that she was taking a lot more time with her work. . . . She read to the whole family with excitement and expression."

In the end, the parents' passion was rewarded with the closest thing to good news that night. After they had finished testifying, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. announced that the threatened Reading Recovery jobs would be reinstated with money made available by the federal stimulus package.

The crowd applauded, but most of the parents stayed the next three hours, going home only after the final vote.