Perhaps a ballot query could possibly be redemptive, and a modest one at that. Do the residents of St. Paul require that at the very least one member of the varsity board have a background within the financial industry, not limited to, but including the banking, accounting or auditing professions, or at one time in his or her life has at the very least run a curbside Kool-Aid stand?
The board just approved its first-ever $1 billion budget, despite declining enrollment. Just one board member, Uriah Ward, the board’s treasurer, voted no on the submitted budget. Ward identified the board received the budget only 4 days before voting on it and had not been given time to think about changes. Good for you, Mr. Ward. What a lonely awareness you have to have. On the other hand, I’m assuming that Ward thought it was an excessive amount of money. Perhaps he thought it wasn’t enough.
Jenelle Hill, a reading teacher at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School, called the shortage of stakeholder involvement “appalling.’’ No input by the stakeholders, she said. No transparency. And Hill has two children in district schools.
I feel those of us who live in St. Paul and pay property taxes are the stakeholders. We’re represented on the board to a certain degree by activists, none of whom list anything of their biographies that remotely shows a familiarity with budgeting a billion dollars.
A billion. Now that it’s a billion, do you, stakeholder, think the budget will ever decrease, or only grow?
Individuals who have an understanding of what a billion dollars is and what it means to the individuals who must pay it apparently don’t run for the varsity board.
Jim Vue, the board’s chair, is a private care assistant for Partners in Community Service.
Jessica Kopp, the board’s vice chair, is a project manager in the varsity of education of an area university and co-organizes a weekly volunteer-run pop-up mutual aid site in her neighborhood.
Halla Henderson, clerk, the primary Eritrean-American elected to the board, is a policy director with the Minnesota Alliance With Youth.
Ward is executive director of the Southeast Community Organization in St. Paul.
Zuki Ellis, director, is a parent/teacher trainer with the National Parent Teacher Home Visits Program.
Jeanelle Foster, director, is an educator/parent educator.
Chauntyll Allen, director, is a youth advocate and educator.
OK, good souls pursuing necessary roles with children and oldsters. However the board needs a wait-a-minute person, a money one who sees the larger picture and asks necessary questions. Do we’d like to spend $114.7 million on latest construction when declining enrollment shows no sign of reversal?
How urgently is funding needed for a brand new East African magnet school? Really? Do East African kids need their very own school? Why?
A wait-a-minute member of the board could do the maths and throw the stakeholders into convulsions by breaking down the $801 million within the budget for general fund categories including salaries.
“Never did I feel I could be leading a district with a $1 billion budget,” Superintendent Joe Gothard said.
Neither did the stakeholders.
And the word “leading” seems greater than a bit kind. Gothard, too, isn’t a wait-a-minute guy.
Joe Soucheray may be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic’’ podcast may be heard at garagelogic.com.