The Baltimore school board approved last night the broad outlines of a spending plan for next school year that would increase class sizes, eliminate 250 teaching positions and reduce a troublesome $58 million deficit by 60 percent.
After hours of poring over the details of the proposed operating budget for the fiscal year that will begin July 1, board members unanimously passed the plan despite saying they need more specifics and an explanation of how the system's top officials intend to educate 90,000 schoolchildren and responsibly spend money after the current year's fiscal disaster.
School board member Diane Bell McKoy said she was concerned that, in many cases, the money doesn't seem to be connected to specific goals.
"It is insufficient in my mind to vote on a set of dollars and not hold the people accountable not just for the dollars, but for the outcomes attached to those dollars," McKoy said. "I am alarmed by the absence of that level of detail."
School administrators presented a first look at the proposed $964 million budget at a public hearing last week. The public and the board saw only a nine-page document with one page detailing spending.
Last night was the first time members of the public had seen the full plan, which contains several hundred pages.
Under the proposal, the system would reduce its $58 million deficit by $35 million next year and create a $10 million fund for spending emergencies.
The plan now goes to the City Council and the mayor. The school board will adopt a final budget after the council and mayor review the proposal.
With next year's funding, the system also will have to pay back $34 million of a $42 million loan from the city, part of a deal orchestrated by Mayor Martin O'Malley to help bail out the nearly insolvent system.
To accomplish such ambitious goals, officials of the cash-strapped system propose significant spending cuts.
In a move that would affect virtually every city public school student, two students would be added to each classroom, raising the average class size to 22 in first grade and, gradually, to 32 in high school.
School system Chief Executive Officer Bonnie S. Copeland said she hopes the larger classes would be for one year only.
School officials said they also plan to cut 250 teaching jobs next year, in part because enrollment is expected to keep falling.
Officials project a decline of about 2,500 students, to 89,275, next year.
