THE BISD BUDGET: AUSTERITY WITH A WOMAN'S TOUCH

"A community of women...has existed almost from time immemorial."

By Juan Montoya
We have been chastized lately (and rightly so) for neglecting to point out that the architects of the Brownsville Independent School District's balance budget that was passed without layoffs, raising property taxes, eliminating pre-K or Kindergarten classes, or raiding the district's reserves was accomplished primaruily through the tireless efforts of the four women on the board.
We ran into three of the female members of the board at a recent Workforce meeting and had no time to explain to them that our admiration for their male colleague Enrique Escobedo and his role on the functions of the board did not obscure the fact that it was them who pulled the whole unweildy mess left to them by former superintendet Brett Springston and his fiscal henchman Chief Financial Officer Tony Fuller.
Chairperson Catalina Presas-Garcia, while commending the united board on its unanimous passage of the finished budget, did not mince words when it came to the male participants in the onerous an lengthy process that resulted in the finished product.

"Escobedo did attend a couple of times, but (Joe) Colunga) and (Rolando) Aguilar showed up maybe once or twice and didn't really get too involved in the process," she said. "It was hard, tedious work but we knew that whatever we did would directly affect our teachers and our students. Instruction was our primary concern."
Guided through the treacherous fiscal shoals by interim superintended Carl Montoya (no relation) and interin CFO Ismael Garcia, the four ladies on the board – Presas-Garcia, Lucy Longoria, Dr. Christina Saavedra, and Minerva Peña – tangled with the numbers and completely changed the direction recommended by the former administrator and his CFO in favor of instruction and away from feathering the nests of the top-heavy bureacracy.
After many long hours of soul-searching and debate leavened with the input of principals, teachers and budget and adhoc committees, they took the tiger by the tail and mended together a product that not only prepares the district for this year's travails, but also prepares it for the coming year of biennium-funded state budget.
These are the lean years that the biblical Joseph was talking about and they resolved not to touch the stored grain saved for the even leaner coming year on the horizon.
At the end of the day they managed to adopt a balanced $475.3 million budget for the 2011-2012 school year that keeps the current level of pay for all full-time employees and avoids layoffs. At the same time, they left the effective tax rate unchanged at the current rate of 1.0191 per $100 of assessed valuation for maintenance and operation and .0732 per $100 for debt service.
The budget didn’t reward the elites. And it was accomplished without the usual battles on the board.
Wehen the process began, Springston and Fuller submitted schemes that laid heavy hits on the teachers and the classroom. Larger classes, more classes during the day and reduced pay for the extra duties teachers take on were the largest part of their plan.
And they were ready to flat out cut teacher pay if the legislature approved it. As a participant observed, "If you put a title on Springston’s and Fuller’s plan, it would have to be, 'Speed Up the Assembly Line.'”
That was that and not much more than that.
Their plan, to the board members, protected administrators from anything more than a few less work days in the summer.
The bloated bureaucracy in the main office was to be left untouched. Administrators were even eligible for resignation bonuses, even though their positions would not be closed. And, as warped as that plan was, it got worse as time went on.
As news from Austin kept coming in about less and less of a financial hit to the district, Fuller kept moving the goalposts, reporting that the district had to make even more severe cuts. At that point it was clear that the administration was using the budget situation as an excuse to cut classroom costs to fund its aggressive construction agenda.
How, then, did the district end up with up its better budget?
Springston quit, Fuller got himself suspended, and Human Resources director Susan Fox was reassigned.
The three crucial administrators for the budget process had been replaced, and a new direction for the district appeared immediately. Fuller’s budget crunching mathematics were shown to be inaccurate.
The hardh Springston-Fuller focus on teachers and the classroom was softened, and, miraculously it would seem, the main office bureaucracy was streamlined through combining some positions.
With the new administrators in place, the board stopped fighting.
For the first time in the year-long process questions from the board to the administrators were not fudged, or answered nebulously, or weasel-worded, but rather, answered directly.
Input from the community, employees, and campus administrators was listened to and seriously considered. And, in the end, the resulting budget spread the impact of the state’s cutbacks nearly evenly across the school district.

The process is not nearly over.

The state continues to pare its educational outlays almost daily. But with a little tweaking here and revisitng areas of concerns there, it stands as a testimony to the perseverance of the four ladies on the board who decided to manage the public's budget as if it were their household's.

Our hats are off to you, girls.