You don't need a Crystal Ball to see whats coming!

I wish I had a Crystal Ball to peer ahead into Anne Arundel County’s educational future, what would it show us? Our county executive is starting to look like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

Make a lot of noise, and let's hope Toto doesn’t start nipping at the curtain! We all knew 3 years ago that things were going to get worse before they got better, and for a while things looked promising. But hey, anything looks good from the bottom. Except he isn’t coming out from behind the curtain to give great proclamations and fly us home in some big balloon!

The Crystal Ball is set to show us another year of frugal spending. Much to the chagrin of some County officials the School system has been cutting back. Parents are more like a horse of a different color, and our needs are pretty diverse. Yet they have listened to us and made hard choices to stay the path and keep the focus on new programs, cutting edge delivery, and solid gains in closing the achievement gap. 

Many forget, when looking at the spending, that they still have many mandated targets: they have to meet and exceed AYP, Average Yearly Progress. Just ask Annapolis High or Bates Middle what they have overcome to come back from the precipice. That target goes up every year for each school. Every year and more and more schools are getting ever so close to the watch list. One of the biggest ways to combat this is a lower student to teacher ratio. Yes, class sizes! Another would be teachers that are qualified and seasoned. Pay them fairly, negotiate in good faith and show them respect.  I would much rather have a teacher who feels secure and happy, than a teacher worried that they will need a part time job to make ends meet.

The picture we all want to see in the Crystal Ball is graduating seniors, with the ability to get into good colleges, find good jobs, and become productive citizens. STEM, Signature Programs with targeted focuses, and IB Programs all help our children compete in a global fight for their success.

What the Crystal Ball sees instead is remarkably similar to that gypsy magician that Dorothy meets when she first runs away; twisters are coming, destruction and despair, and Dorothy running home in the face of Danger! The County budgeting office is playing a shell game with the school systems needs. Debt service is not money that can be targeted for anything but paying down our bond debt. It is 54 million that means the school system willhave to do without. No matter how you look at it, the school system will be at least 12 million short of the MSDE mandated Maintenance of Effort, in reality but not on paper. The Budget Office has decided to hold up a 2 year old ruling from the States Attorney’s Office on Montgomery County that we can hang our hat on, so we don’t lose yet another 9.5 million in State funding.  Funny thing about the future, we may end up having to fight for that ruling, just so we aren’t millions more in the hole in State Matching funds.

My gut feeling at this point is that the school system could make do with just the money required by law to cover the influx of students expected next year. That might not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. If you have an opinion, feel free to put it here. Better yet put it here and go to a County Council Meeting and tell them, May 9 at 7 p.m. at Old Mill HS or May 11 at the Arundel Center in Annapolis.

Between now and May 31 though, we need everyone to work together and find our way home, with Courage, Wisdom, and Compassion,or as the Good Witch Glinda says, "Someone may come along and drop a house on you!"