Living On The Edge

On the edge? Which edge? The financial edge. Who? That would be the DeKalb County School District. A recent Blue Bag Rag has dramatic opposing page headlines. On the left: DeKalb School Board narrowly passes a $1.6 billion budget. On the right: ESPLOST overpayment forces hard choices for DeKalb Schools. 

Between these two we find the ragged edge where DCSD lives.

Looking at the overpayment, which implies re-payment, the current cost estimate is $10-15 million. This overpayment has been going on since 2022 (can they blame it on pandemic induced incompetence?), so going forward, barring increases in overall sales tax revenue, the shortfall will be $3-4 million. It is the pearl clutching over approximately $15 million taken from a $1,600 million budget that is most alarming. This represents less than one percent of the recently approved budget. So, one percent means the bottom has fallen out? What kind of financial wizards are running this shit show? Does the budget not include open positions? Hard to believe it doesn't, do don't fill them. Yes, at a burdened cost of a quarter of a million or so, you forgo around a hundred vacancies, but is that really a bad thing? This likely exceeds vacancies in the central administration but there are many "teaching" positions with no classroom exposure that rightly should be classified as administration. Just not with an office at the palace. Maybe, just maybe, they could ditch some of the expensive packaged programs our merry-go-round of supes have installed. 

The bottom line? A one percent hit to a budget, any budget, should not be a financial threat, as it should come from this budget item: contingency funds.