"First I look at the purse"

An immediate positive outcome that will emerge from the Mayorally appointed School Committee anointed Task Force on School Revenue should be the realization that the annual budget, as presented and debated, does not provide a complete picture of the real costs to run a school.

On Monday night, the Committee voted to accept a donation of more than $10,000 from the Athletic Boosters Club, for the restricted purpose of funding 5 assistant coach positions. The vote is a formality, a needed part of the process, and the ten thou gets entered into the books and counts as revenue.

For several years, I have been requesting that we do a better job of tracking money spent on behalf of the schools that doesn't get entered into the books, because it never formally comes before the School Committee, except in the form of an acknowledgment or thank you.

Specifically, over the past ten or so years, a range of expenses have simply been pared away in an effort to bring the budget closer to the revenues available. But if you spend, say $5,000 on literacy materials in 2001, (a hypothetical), does that mean you won't need to spend a similar amount in 2003, when we've budgeted far less?

No. What has happened is that the burden for covering costs that ten years ago would have normally come out of the school budget has shifted. Where? To groups like the PTO.

PTO's now raise and spend money on expenses that were and should be covered by the school budget. Reading materials like Guided Reading series', critical to the development of fundamentally sound literacy. Hundreds of dollars for those series. And cultural arts programs.

These items have simply disappeared from the budget by being annually reduced to a pittance of the actual cost; although they have not disappeared from the schools, thanks to the largesse of the PTO's. Therefore, even the emaciated budget we approve and send on to Mayor does not reflect both the presence of these expenses, and the fact that they are being offset now by the community. It's a wash; which results in an actually inaccurate picture of what it really costs to run a school. It isn't a matter of extra money stuffed secretly into line items; or stuffed behind stairwells; the budget itself actually does not capture all the operating costs.

Finally, the Task Force will identify how much money groups like the PTO's have raised to replace normal and reasonable items in the school budget. Like paper towels, and supplies for teachers. Construction paper. Visiting artists. Tissues.

I think the amount raised by the parents to meet basic building and student needs will shock some members of the community, and provide a better account of actual costs. Especially this year, it is important for the community to know that without the full support of the PTO's financially and physically, the reconfiguration would have been far more difficult.