School Board Seeks Budgetary Advice from Community

Progress has been tenuous as the Long Beach School District tries to asseble a Budget Advisory Committee for the 2011-2012 school year budgeting process.

Advertisements at the last three board meetings and in a local paper have attracted only three volunteers for a body that previously averaged 7 to 8 members.

"Getting people involved has been a problem," said Patrick Gallagher, vice president of the Long Beach Board of Education.

Gallagher draws a correlation between the funding increases in the budget, which in recent years have remained relatively low and is 2 percent on the current budget, and the size of the turnout to join the advisory committee.

"I think it has become less important [in the community] because the school district has been keeping the budget down," he said.

The committee comprises resident volunteers who meet multiple times a month, from January through April, to develop a list of comments and recommendations in a consensus statement to present to the board, before the community votes on the budget in May.

Starting in January, the committee will meet every other week in the main conference room of the district administration building on Lido Bolevard, and as the season glides into spring the meeting become weekly.

Frank McQuade, a Long Beach resident and attorney, will serve on the incoming committee, as he did in 2006 and 2008, when he delivered its consensus statements to the board.

According to McQuade, half of the meetings consist of pitches from "invited guests," such as principals, "who give input and figures, tell us their hopes and dreams, and take questions," he said. "[However], the committee doesn't have a bottom line effect."

The five-member school board is responsible for specific proposals for expenses or cuts, as well as other measures to increase revenue. The committee acts only as a general representation of the opinions and concerns of Long Beach citizens.

"If I didn't think they really listened to us, I wouldn't be there," McQuade added.

He explained that the committee goes through the budget line by line. "Micro in analysis but macro in recommendations," he said.

According to McQuade, the issues span a wide range of subjects and topics, including curriculum, food purchase, land use, teachers' salaries and expansion.

Gallagher implicated the admission of students from Island Park, who pay tuition as a revenue generator without cost increase, as a major reason for the lower-cost budgets.

McQuades said he plans to reintroduce the idea of incorporating other areas, such as Atlantic Beach, into the district.

While Gallagher described the committee's purpose as promoting "citizen participation," and "another level of democracy in the community," Michael DeVito, the district's chief operating officer, called joining the committee an "opportunity for the community to review expenditures in more detail."

DeVito, who guides the advisory members on the codes and contracts ingrained in the foundation of the budget, said that it was "too early to tell what the issues would be … [but] usually that comes from the committee itself."

District officials said they will continue to seek volunteers throughout December, but are prepared go ahead with the three volunteers they already have if they cannot find others by January.