All But One in Favor of Operating Budgets

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education adopted its fiscal year 2013 operating budget with a in a meeting Wednesday morning. 

Board member Amalie Brandenburg of Severna Park was the lone member who voted against the operating budget. 

"It was a matter of principal," Brandenburg said. "The way the system is set up with , the system is broken. It's hard to get behind it."

The MOE law has remained a hot topic in Anne Arundel County, with Superintendent Kevin Maxwell and County Executive John Leopold at odds about whether the county met its funding requirements for public schools.

"The county failed to meet its Fiscal Year 2012 MOE obligations, the minimum level of funding that counties are required to allocate in order to support their school systems annually,” the superintendent said in a January budget summary.

Maxwell also said the Maryland State Department of Education told him the county did not meet the MOE obligations, falling $12 million short of the obligatory amount. The school system reportedly faces a $3.8 million penalty from the state.

However, Leopold released a statement in January refuting Maxwell’s claim.

“The Board of Education was not presented with all the information pertaining to the budget,” he said in the release.

After adopting the budget, board members focused their attention on proposed legislation in the General Assembly, including a bill that would track the caloric intake of students eating public school lunches. Board member Teresa Birge had some concerns about the bill, citing that it forced mandates on county officials, but said she supported the overall idea of the effort.

Moving forward, the adopted operating and capital budget is set to go before County Executive John R. Leopold and that's where many supporters of the board's budget say things could get messy.

The school board's budget , but it's money that will surely get cut by the county council, Ray Leone, president of Anne Arundel County Council PTA, said. 

"The county will say [teacher raises] opens a Pandora's box," Leone said. "They'll hack away at anything that's political palatable." 

Leone said Leopold is slow to offer raises for teachers because the county can't afford to offer similiar pay increases for other county positions.

Birge said it's the board of educaiton's "obligation" to put teacher raises in the budget.

When asked what the chances were that teacher raises would be included in Leopold's proposed budget, Leone said "zero."