UPDATED: Richmond, We Have a [Budget] Problem
Last week, state lawmakers sent their two-year, bipartisan budget to Governor Youngkin for his approval and signature--several weeks behind schedule, as the Democratic House and Republican Senate struggled to reach a compromise. This year, the state budget is the last piece of the RPS budget to be set. Unfortunately, the budget — coupled with what the City of Richmond approved earlier this spring — means some tough cuts are ahead for RPS kids.
Let’s recap. In February, Superintendent Kamras proposed a need-based $362.6 million budget for the schools, with $207 million of that budget coming from the City of Richmond. The proposed budget would have requested an additional $22 million from the City of Richmond, partly because the Administration expected less money from the state (more on that in a later post). The Superintendent’s budget prioritized increasing teaching compensation, and made $4 million in cuts to central office positions.
But the School Board approved a budget framework on February 28 calling for just $16 additional million from the City — so, more than $6 million less than what the Administration said was needed. It took nearly two additional months for the Board to finalize a $355.6 million budget proposal. That budget proposal, submitted April 25, included just $15 million from the City of Richmond–so, we’re now at $7 million less than the original budget.
That’s bad, but with the state budget, the picture gets worse.
The state’s budget means that the district is getting $3.1 million less than what the Administration had expected. And, with a mandate to give teachers $2.2 million in one-time bonuses — which wasn’t in RPS’s budget — that means we now have an additional $5.3 million gap in our school budgets for next year.
That includes $1.4 million less for school construction (funded through the capital budget) and nearly $4 million less for ‘operating’ expenses — technology, maintenance, books.
The answer to this complicated math problem? RPS kids are short by more than $12 million. The Administration now needs to propose (and the School Board is now going to have to approve) even deeper cuts.
Did it have to be this way? Nope. The Board can’t raise money (they’d have to collect taxes to do so, which they are not legally allowed to do), but they can be kids’ advocates, especially with other City officials like the Mayor and the Council — who do hold the purse strings.
Put simply, the best way to avoid $12 million in cuts was the School Board advocating to City officials to fund the Superintendent’s full budget request.
Do we know for certain that the Mayor would have provided all $22 million in additional funding if the School Board had asked for it? No, we don’t. But Rule One in budgeting is if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
And, even if the Mayor’s budget had fallen short of providing RPS an additional $22 million, City Council has a review process. Between March and May, the Board could have advocated for additional funding. This has happened many times in Richmond’s history, and often City Council has in fact provided the schools more money than the mayor’s proposal. But the Board was extremely late in getting its final, itemized budget to the City — so the time to negotiate and advocate was wasted.
Look at it from Council’s perspective: the School Board was late in making its budget request, asked for less money that the Superintendent said he needed, and didn’t provide details on where the money would go until April 25 — the last possible minute.
If you asked your boss to increase your department budget at work, your boss would want to know how the money would be spent — salaries? Supplies? Maintenance? — and wouldn’t give you the money until you provided them with details. It’s the same situation here.
The Administration needs to ensure that all money received is well-spent, but putting the district in a position to make hard tradeoffs is a big failure by the School Board, in a few ways:
Failure to seek the funding recommended by the Superintendent based on need
Failure to complete a line-item budget in a timely way and to advocate for that budget before City Council
Failure to anticipate the the additional cuts from the state, and to advocate for more money from the City to offset those cuts
The RPS School Board should have been leading the charge for more school funding before both City Council and the General Assembly over the last three months.
Who’s going to lose out? Our kids.
We plan to update this post after Monday’s School Board meeting as more detailed information becomes available.
Update, June 15
Superintendent Kamras provided some additional information on the budget picture at Tuesday’s special board meeting. He confirmed that further cuts are necessary, but the good news is that he and his staff have determined the total sum to be cut from the previously approved budget is just $1.266 million. This is in part because state cuts to certain programs also mean the required local match is cut.
It’s important to keep sight of the big picture: this relatively manageable cut comes on top of the $7 million already cut from the Superintendent’s February proposal: the $6 million the School Board didn’t even ask for, and the $1 million it lost by submitting its budget late to Council and missing the opportunity to advocate for funds. It is imperative that the School Board do a better job in its budget process next year: our kids just can’t afford to lose needed resources.
