According to Baltimore City Public School System records, 128 employees made more than $100,000 over the 2005-2006 school year. If the $14,177,158.05 spent on those 128 salaries instead went to the children ? 2,835 of them could be given $5,000 scholarships to attend the school of their choice.

Carter is not proposing anything so courageous as school vouchers, but she is taking a step in the right direction. She wants to shift funding from the central office to the schools. She would publish school-based budgets each year. That will make it much more difficult for North Ave. to hide its administrative expenses, the highest in the state.

According to the most recent state school data, BCPSS spent nearly $50 million on administration in 2004-2005. That outstrips the $28 million Baltimore County spent on school administration the same year; $41 million in Prince George?s County, and $31 million in Montgomery County ? all districts with thousands more students.

It would be one thing if the hefty administrative spending translated into more oversight. But as the recent revelations about mishandling of school repairs show, the overbloated bureaucracy allows problems to fester.

Building more schools, as candidate Sheila Dixon proposes, and returning city schoolsto local control from the state-city oversight model as another rival, Keiffer Mitchell, (and Carter) promotes, are ideas akin to using a garden hose to put out a five-alarm fire.

Carter?s plan to make BCPSS more financially accountable must endure the election. New BCPSS chief executive officer Andres Alonso should take up the suggestion regardless of the outcome. Usable financial data would make it much easier for him to analyze what works and what doesn?t. And it would give principals the ability to direct funds where they are best able to serve students ? the reason the system exists, right?