Same Old Story...

Funny how many Aerosmith song titles seem eerily appropriate when describing the school district and its budget process.

Same Old Story (Same Old Song and Dance)
Train Kept A Rollin'
S.O.S (Too Bad)
Cryin'
Crazy
Just Push Play

There's a million of em'. All great classic rock n' roll tuneage. Too bad we can't say the same for the district budget process.

So here we are...admittedly earlier than last year's August 13th date for a public hearing on the budget....but then again, we have no significant contract issues this year.

More importantly, it's T Minus 48 hours till the budget hearing and there are NO BUDGET MATERIALS for the community to review prior to the meeting. And who's to say there WILL be anything until just prior to...or even at....the meeting.

Rewind to last year (which was itself a repeat of the prior year):

Public Hearing on the Budget this Week (Aug 9, 2009)
08/12/2009 SPECIAL FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING 7:00 p.m., at the District Office, Yep....at long last there will be a public hearing on the budget. However,...just like last year...there's no information for you to review. Can you say "SHENANIGANS"? What a great game plan: if the district doesn't make all these numbers available to the public until just before the meeting, then there's no way the public can make enough sense of them to formulate an opinion. Therefore, the District can march ahead and do what they want and say, "Well, we held a public hearing and received no comments".


How is the community supposed to provide input on the budget if they don't have anytime to REVIEW the budget?

Or is it that we just talk the talk but refuse to walk the walk?

Is it too much to ask to give the community information and time to digest it and formulate questions? [We guess it must be]. How would the school board like it if their board packets weren't made available until the day before a board meeting. Scratch that....we know at least some of them wouldn't care because it's clear they don't read them beforehand anyway.

And while we're at it....how about a change in format? How about we truly hold a HEARING....you know which implies that the community talks and the Finance Committee listens (hears)?

Ahhh...never mind, as that other Aerosmith tune goes,
DREAM ON.

[P.S. we bet a buck that after they read this, information gets posted to the website by noon tomorrow]