Report: State Shorted MCPS $20 Million Or More
>Adam Pagnuccco at Maryland Politics Watch reports a blockbuster scoop: Superintendent Jerry Weast says that, due to a miscalculation, the State shorted Montgomery County Public Schools between $20 million and $25 million.
That is a significant amount of money and could have helped avoid any number of anxious conflicts over the last year.
Here is how Adam explains it:
In Maryland, state aid to public schools is driven by a wealth formula. “Wealthier” school districts receive less aid per pupil than “poorer” school districts. One component of this wealth formula is real property value as calculated by the State Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT). . . . In FY 2009, state aid for MCPS was actually cut because Montgomery County’s wealth level allegedly increased in comparison to other counties. At the time he learned of the cut, Dr. Weast claims he complained of an error in the calculations to the County Executive, County Council and state delegation. In a memo to the Board of Education released [Tuesday], Dr. Weast says he has been proven correct. SDAT now admits that it overestimated the value of real property in Montgomery County by $15.8 billion because it double-counted new homes. The result is that Montgomery lost $20-25 million in state aid due from the wealth formula. That money was instead paid out to other school districts in the state.
This remarkable revelation is likely to have serious political and budgetary ramifications.
We’ll be talking more about this with Adam when he is a guest on Rockville Central Radio tomorrow, so be sure to listen. Just go here or dial 646-200-3332.
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Wondering why this is a “blockbuster scoop”? In Montgomery County Public Schools $20 – $25 million is a very tiny amount of money in a $2.1 billion dollar school system budget. $20-$24 million is such a small amount of money that the Superintendent can spend that amount of money without oversight by the Board of Education at their public meetings. Purchases of that amount are of no concern to the Board of Education or the County Council because they represent such an insignificant amount of the total budget. Parents are told this time and time again when they question budget expenditures and prioritizations, that this is too small an amount of money to quibble over.>
For example, in the summer of 2008 the Superintendent spent over $19 million (probably closer to $23 million) dollars to purchase upwards of 3,300 Promethean Boards without a public discussion or vote of the Board of Education on these thousands of electronic blackboards. Since then the Superintendent has released two versions of a June 9, 2008 memos to explain the expenditure outside the Board table (released to different people).
Why wouldn’t that be a “blockbuster scoop”?
The two memos with the same date and same topic are written to the Board of Education. The two June 9th memos are not in Board of Education minutes but can be found at the following link along with a lease for 2,600 of the Promethean Boards. The documents were obtained via multiple Maryland Public Information Act requests and Councilmember requests.
http://www.parentscoalitionmc.com/MCPSExpenseReports.html
Which June 9th memo did the Board of Education receive? The Board of Education never discussed the purchase of thousands of Promethean Boards in public. It was apparently not a significant expenditure.
Also purchased without a public discussion has been $9 million in security cameras for schools. The public can learn about this purchase from a company press release, not from Board of Education minutes. Here is the press release:
http://www.milestonesys.com/Files/UserFiles/Docs/customerstory/MontgomeryCountySchools.pdf
Another $9 million (unknown for sure) was spent on something called EasyLobby, an identification system for school front offices. Again, there is no discussion of the EasyLobby purchase in Board of Education minutes.