Statement to the PGCPS Board of Education

 by Doris A. Reed, ASASP Executive Director

June 24, 2010

I am here tonight to speak for the members of ASASP.  Our presence should be an indication to you of our disappointment with you and the anticipated finalization of the FY 2011 Operating Budget!  Over these last several months, ASASP has offered alternatives to reconciling this Budget…all have been turned down, with little or no rational explanation.   As an example…over the last ten years, the dollars budgeted for “contracted services” has gone from $89.7M in 2000 to $200.5M for FY 2010.  A reduction of 10% in this category alone would save over $20 million dollars…perhaps, avoiding the need for furloughs all together.

You call your proposed budget “bare-bones”  --  well, the only bones showing are those of the employees of this school district, as they are made to fast off the “shallow-minded, no improvement-compensation drippings” of your callous decision-making!  The only “fat” in this budget, is that which was promoted and included by the last superintendent of schools, to whom you gave carte blanche authority…which produced programs and initiatives of little or no merit for student academic achievement.  Your hands-off approach to him has left this school district reeling from unaccounted dollars in excess of $90 million. You expect this new Superintendent to clean up this mess, with the brow-beating of our Unit members! Your incompetence of understanding of simple budgeting alternatives has left you intellectually impotent to any offered suggestions of merit!

The only response coming out of your offices is “NO”…and that “no” has caused you to mishandle millions of dollars associated with a fateful and failed decision to move your operations to another location…school system employees are now having to pay for your arrogance, with furloughs and no pay improvements, while being told to “do more with less.”!  You cry about the funding of this FY Budget, but fail to acknowledge the “full-funding” provided by the County Executive and County Council in years prior…fund balances of around $100 million have just simply disappeared!  You held no one accountable for those lost dollars and just put the burden of making up the loss on the backs of your employees!

We are trying hard to retain our professionalism in the face of your lack of support for not only our members, but also the very nature of good faith bargaining.  You have summarily discounted the basic tenets of our Negotiated Agreements, using this financial/budget crisis as a method to avoid negotiating on required subjects.  Bargaining in good faith is as foreign to you as is sushi to an elephant.  To say that you have demonstrated a total disregard for ethical practices is too kind a statement.

While I am only allowed three minutes to address you, your four years of “disservice” to this school district will certainly mark a significant “low-point” in the educational history of this County.  That some of you have chosen to run for the hills and not seek re-election is a blessing to the employees and children of this school district.  For you few who have chosen to run again…we will give you the same support you have given us over the length of your tenure!!!