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When a person enters into the world of school budgeting, he or she passes through the looking glass into the world of Lewis Carroll. Maybe all budgeting is done this way. Some might assert that government budgeting follows marketing theory in which every transaction involves someone knowing something that the other party to the transaction does not. The people who work with the school budget have been burned often enough by the Metropolitan Council and the public at large, the they are naturally defensive. "Truth" at a time like this can feel like budgetary suicide. This leads to a natural secretiveness which stimulates the innate distrust on the part of teachers and citizens.

A budget is not put together in a vacuum. The Mayor wanted a surplus in the fund balance. He was displeased that Bill Wise had spent what he, the Mayor, had wanted saved in reserves. The state with the encouragement of the national government was threatening "takeover" of school districts which did not improve test scores. School board members had already bought into the slogan of "we will do whatever it takes," which they believed meant that we will do whatever Pedro Garcia says it takes, to have the best school system in the country. Arriving from the land of big class sizes, Garcia and Sandra Johnson quickly concluded that the schools were "overstaffed." So despite the approximate 30 million dollars in additional funding which the mayor promised, the early publicity was that overstaffing needed to be reduced by cutting about 300 teachers.

In this struggle the MNEA was handicapped. The contract had been settled the previous year so compensation could not be used to motivate teachers to come to meetings. The state requirements, passed with Bill Purcell's initiative in 1993, prevented any staff cuts from hitting grades K-6. So the 300 positions projected to be lost would all be in grades 7-12. Since grades 7 and 8 had never felt the advantages of reduced class size, those teachers were fatalistic. They believed that things could not get any worse, except that the enrichment programs of the middle schools would be cut. Art, music, speech, band, and classes in wellness were all cut. Additionally, in high schools the vocational programs were reduced by one-half or more.

Ronald Reagan showed twenty years earlier, that when a meat-ax approach is taken to a budget, Most constituent groups hide away in the comfort of thinking that their own interest is not being hurt, and they cannot unite to prevent injustice to others. That was true of teachers. It was also true that without any support whatsoever from the mass media, citizens were greatly out maneuvered. One example was the school board's hearings on the budget. Of eleven speakers, only one spoke in favor. Two were neutral. The rest were opposed. The MNEA President was only one of many. But in the Tennessean the next morning, the headline was "Teachers Union Lone Voice Against Budget." It was all so unnecessary. At the end of the year, the budget was closed with a 22 million dollar surplus.

What were the changes? The primary focus was to move money away from teachers and into computers and printed material. Additionally, ELL teachers of a segregated variety , campus monitors, and test-taking coaches would be added. Where ESL students had been integrated into regular classrooms before, now they would be separated. In some cases this allowed them to have larger class sizes, but more often it was simply an ELL ghetto. Teacher aides and general school aides were replaced with security guards (campus monitors). Millions of dollars worth of printed material was created and/or purchased to be used by teachers who were given students who had not passed the state tests. This naturally reduced further the need for elective programs. The idea was to forget electives if a person had not yet passed the state tests. Of course, this attitude also led to many students dropping out of school.

At the same time these 83 budget changes were being contemplated--about one-half of which were good ideas--Garcia was also finalizing plans to transfer about fifty principals. This activity caused a major distraction in the community and turned out to be a club with which to beat the MNEA at a perceived time when the MNEA would be vulnerable on membership issues. This may or may not have helped in the school budget struggle since, in reality, in the first budget Garcia would be given whatever he wanted. The blow-by-blow tactics require a separate page which allows one to jump to the end of the story--except in budgeting, where there is no end.

The first day back in the fall, with the extreme class sizes and general chaos of new relationships was best summarized by Harry McMackin in a page here from the MNEA's website. Insufferable conditions persisted for about six weeks. At that point about 100 new staff were hired to reduce some class sizes in high schools. Also five guidance counselors were restored to take care of the most extreme conditions. While the first personnel report showed 300 fewer professional staff than the previous year, by December, the shortfall was only 200. For technical reasons, however, this reduced staff did impact the MNEA's membership total. While the middle schools got no relief during 2002-03, a few school board members were sensitive to the suffering there. In the next several budget cycles, they gradually restored music and art programs. The full range of enrichment that was part of Progressive Education's middle school philosophy did not reappear, however.

So again, native Nashvillians marveled at the ability of the California people to use public relations in a way to bedazzle the local citizens into thinking that the school money was being well spent. This was no time for truth. The MNEA President was as popular as a flashlight on a hayride. He said that Garcia had "built his house on the sand." The danger was, however, if the union president or anyone else actually succeeded in persuading the public that the school money was being wasted, the results could not be judiciously handled by the citizens. So well meaning school advocates had to slowly work around the edges of school management to gradually correct injustices.

New Priorities: School Budget 2002