Anne Arundel schools Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell will not attend County Executive John R. Leopold's budget address Tuesday morning and has scheduled his own announcement after it ends, a highly unusual move that suggests that school officials are bracing for bad news.
Amid fears over major cuts to the proposed $941 million school system budget, Leopold said his fiscal 2008 spending plan "reflects a tight-fisted management style to reduce wasteful government spending."
However, Leopold has pledged some funding for schools. Referring to a "crisis" in educator recruitment and retention, Leopold said last week that he will fund not only a negotiated 6 percent raise for teachers, but also an unanticipated 6 percent raise for principals.
Speaking broadly of the education budget, which historically represents half of the county's overall budget, Leopold said: "The public will be pleased."
He and other county officials declined to elaborate on most parts of the budget until his announcement, and school officials said they have gotten no indication of how much of a proposed $135 million spending increase will survive.
School board Vice President Eugene Peterson, who said he will not attend the budget address, said the absence of key school officials is the result of weeks of being rebuffed by the county executive and his staff.
Peterson said education leaders "received at least a ballpark" in previous years. "But we got nothing this year."
"I don't think there's been a lot of communication between Leopold and Maxwell," Peterson added. "I'm going to stand up for my superintendent here. [Maxwell] has made several attempts to sit with Leopold, and the message he got was: `Don't call us. We'll call you if we need you.'"
School board President Tricia Johnson said she has not decided whether she will attend.
Maxwell's budget staff is expected to attend the address, and then return to the school system headquarters to confer with Maxwell and hold a news conference.
Asked why Maxwell wasn't attending Leopold's address, school system spokesman Bob Mosier said, "Leopold didn't come to our budget presentation" in January. But Mosier said the superintendent's absence shouldn't be construed as adversarial.
"This is not Kevin Maxwell versus John Leopold," Mosier said.
