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Gorman: ‘Likely potential’
for shorted budget and cuts
Superintendent worries CMS might feel pinch
by Anna Butler
anna@thecharlotteweekly.com
At a June 6 media briefing, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman did not disguise his dismay at the county’s recent refusal to grant CMS its budget request in full. The Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners disclosed at a June 5 meeting the plan to withhold nearly $5 million from CMS’s initial request, causing the school board and Gorman to consider putting another notch in the already tightened budget belt. Although cuts may be on the not-so-distant horizon, Gorman warns that prematurely disclosing where the trimmings will be made could be risky before the state exposes its fiscal appropriations for the school system.
In a letter of request by Board of Education Chairman Joe White, Gorman and the CMS board presented a plea for $30.3 million, an increase of $20.8 million. The local cost requests totaled $17.5 million to cover the expense of “growth and sustaining operations.” With an estimated increase of 5,000 students for the 2007-08 school year, the board felt the community’s future hinged on the ability to fully fund the educational needs of “tomorrow’s workers, tomorrow’s citizens and tomorrow’s leaders.” The school board attributed its appeal for increased funding to higher insurance costs, state-mandated salary increases and the additional $9.6 million needed to cover two new schools. Now, local funding decisions have left CMS with a $5 million shortfall and a longer-than-ever to-do list.
“We haven’t decided (where cuts will be made). It is way too early,” Gorman told Charlotte Weekly after the briefing. “We have to be careful until we know the final number (the appropriations amount) from the state, because if we say where those final cuts would be and we end up getting the money, then we create a perilous situation. If an employee thinks there may be a cut and we end up getting funding, that employee could leave us and go somewhere else.”
Although initially the numbers proposed by the county manager were more closely aligned with CMS’s expectations, Gorman described the newly announced budget hiccup as a “very normal thing.” Currently the county provides one-third of the budgeting dollars for CMS, leaving the remaining two-thirds as the state’s responsibility. “Right now we are in the process of monitoring what the state budget is,” said Gorman. “If we find that it (the state budget) does not reach what we have as our existing budget, we will have to sit down and go through a process and the board will make recommendations on how we would monitor the budget.
“I can say with certainty, we never got exactly … what we asked for from state, local and federal (funding sources),” Gorman said of years past. “We are used to this. I don’t mean to be flippant about being $5 million short, but the process we are used to. We are working on decisions and recommendations that we would make to the board pending the outcome.” Although seemingly calm, Gorman cautioned that cuts could come at a sacrifice. “We recommended to the board a budget that we feel (included) the things we had to have,” said Gorman, adding that reductions would affect “serious areas that will be detrimental to the quality of programs that we provide to the kids. These will be painful decisions that we have to make.”
Gorman and the school board now face a slightly heightened hurdle but remain optimistic, understanding that the process was not entirely fruitless. “I am disheartened it wasn’t the full funding in the end,” Gorman said. “Budgeting is an ongoing process. It is a multiple-year relational and related experience. We are always working to build the bridge for next year and to create that foundation.”
For now, the CMS budget is on standby pending the state’s final decision. Until then, many are speculating about which areas the restrictions are most likely to affect. “It depends on when the budget is passed,” said Gorman, noting that the state has no definitive deadline by which to pass the budget.
Although much remains unclear, Gorman thinks parents should be aware of the situation. “We have come up $5 million short from allocation from the county,” explained Gorman. “The state is still working on their budget, but there is likely potential that the district will have to go back and make some reductions.”
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