Allow me to start out by saying that I have felt lucky to have my 4 children attend the Tallmadge public schools in the last several years. The schools have earned excellent academic ratings, the high school sports programs have been well managed, and we are well on our way to finshing the building a big beautiful new high school.

Having said, I could not be more disappointed with the school board's performance through the budget process that had lead us to some rather extreme budget woes.

Every business/organization eventually finds itself in some difficult and challenging fiscal situations. Many Ohio businesses (and people) are struggling right now to make ends meets. Many businesses have had to enact virtual pay freezes on their employees and cut back on fringe benefit plans in order to balance their budgets.

But not Tallmadge schools, arguably in fact, the opposite has occurred. From FY06 to FY07, Tallmadge school's salary and fringe payments to employees increased by 1.3million. Not only that, another contractual pay increase was approved in November of FY07, again increasing salary alone by an estimated 570,000 in FY08.

Conceptually, I don't have a problem with teachers and school employees getting pay raises and strong fringe packages at all. What I do have a problem with is approving substantial pay and fringe benefits payments when the school budget can not support such payments without cutting other programs/areas. The school board knew with certainty that there would be near-future budget shortfalls when they approved these increases. They knew that if the most recent levy did not pass, these increases would be paid for by sacrificing other areas with the budget. Therefore, I believe the school board acted irresponsibly in their budget planning and decision making.

What would I recommend? First, how about the basic concept of not spending money you don't have for starters? The school board isn't the federal government, they can't execute a budget with the expectation that they can deficit spend if the revenue doesn't exist to pay for expenditures. This would have meant going into teacher contract negotiations and negotiating a pay raise contract that would have been held in abeyance upon approval of the most recent levy (or next levy to be passed). Or holding the contract negotiations off until a tax levy passed, either would have been prudent decisions.

However the school board did not chose to do that, instead the board has sought to make up the losses in other ways : Reductions in teacher/staff positions, expensive pay-to-participate sports/activities, and $2500 per pupil for the privilege of full day kindergarten. Arguably, none of which needed to occur if the board had no chosen not to increase school expenses until a levy was passed. A series of poor choices ...the school board should be admonished in my opinion.