Chutzpah

While County Executive John Leopold is trying to trim county spending, School Superintendent Dr. Kevin Maxwell wants to hike school spending by 17 percent:

About $75.6 million of the proposed increase is needed just to maintain the status quo, said Dr. Maxwell, who submitted his first budget to the Board of Education since taking the reins of Anne Arundel's 74,000-student school district last year.

"The school system in Anne Arundel County is underfunded," he said, and the budget is "the first step to try to provide adequate funding for the school system."

How come career educators are the first to finger money as the root of all problems with our public schools? Why must the public be consistently expected to send more and more public dollars to the educational bureaucracy? How many times have school budgets been raised, with little or no improvement in results?

When I sought appointment to the Board of Education four years ago, the question was asked again and again and again about school spending. My answer stayed the same: you cannot spend more and more money and expect to get different results by leaving the apparatus in place. I noted on several occasions during those hearings that if educational excellence corresponded to per-pupil spending, Washington D.C. would have the best schools in the nation. That did not sit well with many in the crowd, particularly members of the teacher's union, but it's the truth.

Until we address the problems that we have in the current system, what good will additional money do? Yet, it seems that Leopold will in fact substantially increase the school system budget ("Excellence has costs. But the failure to provide (an adequate education) has even higher costs," he said in the article).

These are the kind of issues that make it so important that the voters of Anne Arundel County get an opportunity to vote for members of the Board of Education.