The Frederick County Board of Supervisors deadlocked once again Wednesday night, as the seven board members couldn’t reach an agreement over how much money to give the school division for the upcoming fiscal year 2023 operating budget.

Supervisors Judith McCann-Slaughter, Bob Wells and Charles DeHaven Jr. voted in favor of Scenario A, which would fully fund the division’s $219.58 million operating budget request. The plan would provide $97.5 million in county funding — a roughly $4.6 million increase in local tax dollars from the current fiscal year. State and federal monies make up the balance.

Supervisors Doug McCarthy, Blaine Dunn and Josh Ludwig supported Scenario C, with the county providing about $95.4 million. This would represent a roughly $2.5 million increase in county tax dollars from the current fiscal year, but about $2.1 million less than the division requested.

Both scenarios would allow the school division to provide all employees a 5% salary increase and would enable the division to fund 29 new teaching positions.

Supervisor Shawn Graber opposed both scenarios. Graber maintains that the schools have not been transparent with budget information and believes both proposals would give the division too much funding.

Graber showed a detailed line-item budget from Rockingham, North Carolina, to illustrate what he is seeking in a school budget. He said FCPS provided him with a “picture book” with comparatively few details.

Lacking a majority vote, the supervisors voted 4-3 to delay the matter until a special May 4 meeting.

Over 40 county residents spoke about the school operating budget before the vote. A majority favored fully funding the schools’ request, saying that doing otherwise would result in special education suffering. These residents also argued that the county was in good financial standing and could afford funding the request. 

Several speakers felt the school budget was not transparent and questioned the types of books that taxpayer money was funding. Some parents complained that school libraries contain books filled with explicit sexual content and themes of rape, abortion, gender identity and drug use. They argued that such books were inappropriate for minors.

If Scenario A is not approved, the school administration has argued several items would be eliminated from its budget. The school board voted 4-3 last week to remove the following in the event Scenario C was approved:

• $225,000 for three new career and technical education teachers.
• $1.17 million for a new pay scale for special education teachers (increase base pay by $6,000)
• $131,000 for a new pay scale for speech therapists (increase base pay by $6,000).
• $469,724 for a new pay scale for special education instructional assistants (increase base pay by $3,000)
• $37,577 for a new pay scale for behavior specialists (increase base pay by $6,000)
• $2,545 for a new pay scale for behavioral instructional assistants (increase base pay by $1,000)
• $82,500 to add supplement pay to instructional assistants with a degree
• $25,000 to grow the Frederick County Public Schools graduate incentive

McCarthy on Wednesday questioned whether Scenario C would necessitate cutting those items.

McCarthy said he confirmed on Wednesday with school board Chairman Brandon Monk, Superintendent David Sovine and school Finance Director Patty Camery that the school administration had earmarked $7.2 million of this year’s budget request to fund new HVAC units for the former Robert E. Aylor Middle School. The $7.2 million comes from federal ESSER III funds. 

The school division previously considered renovating the old middle school into a High School Academy to enhance CTE opportunities and reduce overcrowding in the high schools. The school division determined earlier this year, however, such renovations were not financially feasible. Therefore, the School Board plans to surplus the former school sometime later this year.

“There’s nothing in the documents that we received that states that money was earmarked for the old Aylor school, and no one on the School Board mentioned to us this information when we were having discussions with them, so to all those people who say that all the information is out there, it’s all online for the world to see and we are getting perfect transparency from the school system, I again say ‘wrong,’” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said the information he received means there is now at least $7.2 million in the school’s “needs-based budget that is no longer needed because the School Board voted to do away with the Aylor project.” According to information received, he said four of the nine projects in the school division’s capital budget could be paid for using the freed-up federal funds. He said those four projects total $3,050,000. If the school division used the approximately $3 million in ESSER III funds to finance capital projects, McCarthy argued the school division would have $4 million in leftover federal funding.

“What this means is that the school administration has more than enough money freed up by the elimination of the old Aylor school to fully fund the rest of the entire needs-based budget as presented to the Board of Supervisors and the School Board, even if we adopt Scenario C,” McCarthy said.

He asked why the school administration has kept pushing the narrative that it would be unable to provide all of the pay increases in its initial budget request if Scenario A were not funded.

“They’ve created an artificial shortage of funds and say they can’t hire the teachers, despite the fact that they had the means to fully fund the needs originally presented in their needs-based budget,” McCarthy said. “This is politics, plain and simple. The bottom line is this — with the removal of Aylor from the list of needs, there is money available that can offset some of the requests for additional county funds.”

Graber also questioned why the $7.2 million in freed-up federal funds couldn’t be used to fund the three CTE positions and special education needs. He agreed that the teachers need a raise but believes the schools don’t need Scenario A to provide it.

“There is plenty of money there to give our teachers the raises they deserve,” Graber said. 

McCann-Slaughter pushed back, saying she spoke with Sovine before the board meeting and there were federal and state restrictions on how ESSER III funds could be used.

When the supervisors deadlocked again, Dunn tried to reach a compromise — funding a scenario between Scenarios A and C. No other supervisors supported Dunn’s motion. The board debated the school budget for 90 minutes, with numerous alternative budget proposals suggested and shot down.

When it became apparent that none of the supervisors were going to agree on Scenario A or C, McCarthy suggested having a special May 4 meeting to resolve the matter and obtain additional clarification from Monk, Camery and Sovine about the ESSER III funds.

McCann-Slaughter noted that Sovine, Camery and three School Board members — Brian Hester, Ellen White and Bradley Comstock — were at the meeting. She suggested asking Sovine and Camery to clarify how the ESSER III funds could be used.

“It would appear to me that we shouldn’t put this off for a week when you’ve got the two people in the administration who understand the restrictions of these funds,” McCann-Slaughter said. “They can answer our questions this evening.”

But McCarthy said he wanted to wait until Monk was also present “because the two people standing before us are also the two people who didn’t tell us that Aylor was part of the budget.” He said he wants Monk, Sovine and Camery to be in the room together to ensure no conflicting information is given.

DeHaven, McCarthy, Dunn and Ludwig voted to postpone the issue and schedule a special 5:30 p.m. May 4 meeting in the County Administration Building, 107 N. Kent St. McCann-Slaughter, Wells and Graber opposed the vote.

Sovine sent an email Thursday addressing some of the comments made during Wednesday’s meeting.

He wrote that accusations that the schools were not transparent about using one-time ESSER III funds for Aylor renovations were inaccurate. On numerous occasions since July, he said staff had reported to the School Board about the possibility of using $7.2 million in ESSER III funding for the renovations. He said that information was posted on the school division’s homepage for 30 days as part of the process of seeking public input.

Sovine said it is possible to reallocate these one-time ESSER III funds for other purposes provided the expenditures fall within the allowable uses for those funds. He said the expenditures must address the impact of COVID-19 as noted below:

School facility repairs and improvements to enable the operation of schools to reduce the risk of virus transmission and exposure to environmental health hazards and to support student health needs; and inspection, testing, maintenance, repair, replacement and upgrade projects to improve the indoor air quality in school facilities, including mechanical and non-mechanical heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, filtering, purification, and other air cleaning, fans, control systems and window and door repair and replacement. 

At the school division’s Tuesday buildings and grounds committee, Assistant Superintendent for Administration Vernon Bock recommended reallocating $7.2 million in ESSER III earmarked for the Aylor school to instead replace Armel Elementary School’s HVAC system. Bock stated the HVAC replacement project, and the current ESSER II dehumidification project at Armel, would decrease Armel renovation costs and an addition project on the Capital Improvement Plan.

In other news, the supervisors voted 4-3 on Wednesday night to authorize the county attorney to request an official advisory opinion from the attorney general, asking: “May the Board appropriate public funds for private primary and secondary educational uses and, if so, to whom?” McCarthy, Ludwig, Graber and Dunn supported the motion, while DeHaven, Wells and McCann-Slaughter opposed it.

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Originally Appeared Here