The Prince William County School Board voted to hire an external group to conduct an analysis of the school division's budget in order to determine if it would be advisable to adopt a zero-based budget process in the near future.
“There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of comments on the budget. I think having outside eyes would be good for us,” Chairman-at-Large Milt Johns said.
A zero-based budget would mean that the school system would no longer set budgets based on the prior fiscal year, but would start with zero, and then examine all costs, determining what are necessary and unnecessary expenditures.
However, before they adopt a zero-based budget, the school board is first asking that they consult a professional outside organization as to whether or not zero-based budgeting could actually help the district improve upon or tighten their annual expenditures.
“What we’re voting on is having a contractor come in and do a review of our budget with a zero-based budget analysis,” Johns said. He explained recommendations could range from “don’t change what you’re doing,” to “go to a zero-based budget, to do something in between,” Johns said.
According to Superintendent Walts, the analysis would primarily focus on the functions and costs of running the central offices. However, it would not necessarily exempt schools, as the consulting firm may want to look into the efficiency of site-based management, perhaps in broad terms of the overall procedure.
“It would be primarily the central offices in doing that; you still have to have a deep understanding of what the schools are doing, what is site management and how it works,” Walts said.
Walts said that individuals within the outside company would probably need to sit down with employees of the central office to understand costs and procedures.
While school board members hoped that the analysis could be completed before budget time, Walts believed an expedited process would likely cost more money than the $250,000 the board anticipated on spending. Johns said he expects it may not be completed in time, but they might gain some pertinent information to apply to their budget process this year.
Furthermore, Walts explained it would be a “very time consuming process” and even before it could begin, the district would have to issue an RFP (request for proposal), which in itself is time consuming.
Because of budgetary concerns, Johns stipulated that Walts seek approval from the school board should the cost for the analysis well exceed their estimate of $250,000 before the motion was put to a vote.
The motion was approved by six of the eight members with Dr. Michael Otaigbe of the Coles District voting 'nay,' and Lillie Jessie of the Occoquan District abstaining. Jessie said she was concerned with the cost of analysis, in her statement during the meeting.
Brentsville District School Board member Gil Trenum asked the board to seriously consider zero-based budgeting last summer. Since then the issue has been brought up a few times at school board meetings.
However, after the cooperative meeting with the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, Johns said he was convinced this was the right move for the district.
Trenum said he believed zero-based budgeting would offer transparency and piece of mind to the community, saying it would show “not just how much money we’re spending- everyone can see that, but where it’s going.”
While Johns felt strongly that a zero-based budget could provide transparency, he said the vote should not be misconstrued as distrust in the current budget system.
“I support this, but not because I think we do not have a transparent budget,” he said.
Alyson Satterwhite, representative for the Gainesville District, said she approved of looking into zero-based budgeting to show people: “Here’s where we are; this is what we need to fund as a school system,” but specified they should not get involved in “counting pencils.”
Steven Keen of the Woodbridge District said the joint meeting last week convinced him that many supervisors still held concerns that the school board had not done all it could to control its budget, which is his reason for approving the review.
Otaigbe outright disagreed with conducting a zero-based budget, saying he believed they simply needed more money to fund the district, which he described at last week’s joint meeting with the supervisors as having been “bled dry” by tax cuts coupled with high enrollments.
“This is not an allocation problem,” said Otaigbe. “The problem we have is we don’t have enough funds. We don’t have enough money. It’s simple economics.”
While Otaigbe said zero-based budgeting “looks good” and “sounds good” to citizens, he did not believe it was the right approach.
Issues raised during this debate included the fact that the school board already has an annual procedure to analyze a line-item list of expenditures. Furthermore, staff compares its expenditures to other large school districts.
Most school board members suspected that those reviews might not be enough to please the Board of County Supervisors, who routinely use zero-based budgeting to analyze various departments on a rotating schedule.
In a post meeting conversation with Bristow Beat, Trenum said he though zero-based budgeting was important. Last year, he had formed a committee of community members to help him review the line items because he admittedly did not always know the best questions to ask about the budget. However, he said if it were up to him, they would skip the consultation process altogether and simply adopt zero-based budgeting.
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