Speed Gibson

Let me try another perspective on last night's Public Hearing regarding the $5 million in budget cuts facing the Robbinsdale Area Schools, District 281. Suppose this was my first exposure to this district and this problem.

I had a similar experience tagging along with a friend to an Osseo board also facing cuts. As my friend had earlier surmised, clearly no one was in charge. In fact, in was painfully evident that the Superintendent was not leading nor wanted to lead. He formed committees and task forces, letting them make the hard choices, offering no insight, direction, or priority. He supposedly was great at the big picture but clearly had no interest in day to day operations, let alone tough choices like this.

So now, what to make of District 281, as a man from Mars on his first visit? I heard an executive say that when you're making a decision, you should consider which way would you rather be wrong. Here, the key question was the referendum. You've never lost yet, so you follow the same formula. You stay largely positive, but with a sense of urgency via speculation on what failure would mean.

This time, however, there's organized opposition. They even hired a consultant, one with a pretty good track record. You could lose. What should you do? As I understand it, the District did step up the campaign some and responded some. It pushed hard the last few days, but so did the opposition. It's hard to know why in the last analysis but the referendum failed.

Stunned and/or disappointed, the Board now begins the painful task of enumerating $5 million worth of cuts. A number of scenarios are developed regarding closing one or more schools. A decision is made and the public advised, but then a major change is made shortly before this Public Hearing, possibly in response to political pressure. In fact, another option now reappears, elementary pairing. It (cleverly?) frames the debate as how to best close Northport, not whether to close it or another school. Is this politics, too? I don't know, and it doesn't matter now anyway.

What I do know, pretending to be an outsider seeing this for the first time, is that the Board made a significant error in strategy. The process of determining what to cut should have been developed, discussed, and decided before the election. I say that for two reasons, the first being it would have clarified the situation for the voters, and possibly might have carried the day.

The other reason is the compressed timeline we now find ourselves in trying to make the necessary cuts, further shortened by the Holidays. The Board looks like and is in fact, scrambling, having not done their homework.

The Board should have looked at this and realized that it's much easier to increase a cut budget than what we're doing today. The baseline budget for 2008-09 should have assumed the levy failed, not succeeded. That in fact, is the way Hennepin County does its Truth in Taxation projections for taxpayers every year, assuming that all referendums by all units of government fail.

We should not expect the Board and staff to be adroit at budget cutting, since this would require considerable practice. As such, they need to conduct this when they truly have the time, which also helps the voters. It's too late for this cycle, but a mistake that must not be repeated.

One more part to go: what do I think of the proposed cuts?