Mayor Adrian Fenty used his veto pen last week to strike a single $950,000 line item from the 2010 budget, temporarily stalling the city’s spending plan one month before the start of the fiscal year. Fenty rejected the D.C. Council’s effort to empower the State Board of Education to make its own budget and hiring decisions. Those powers currently rest with the executive, which controls public education in the District.
“Additional education investments should be tied to outcomes and results for students,” Fenty wrote Wednesday in a letter to Council Chairman Vincent Gray. “Instead, Council’s action with regard to the State Board weakens the established school governance structure and threatens to take the District’s education reform efforts backward.”
The mayor took the same action in June, not long after the $5.4 billion budget was first approved. But the council was forced to redo the spending plan a month later in the face of a $666 million shortfall, giving Fenty a second occasion to veto.
The budget language does not give the state board new powers, only the authority to make its own spending and hiring decisions.
“This issue is really about the independence of the state board,” board President Lisa Raymond said Friday. “Our staff and budget are determined by the mayor’s office. Our staff reports to a third-level appointee within the mayor’s office. No other place in this entire country is that the case, in which an elected body is reporting to an appointee.”
The nine-member State Board of Education was established in June 2007 as part of the District’s education reform effort. Unlike the former D.C. Board of Education, the new incarnation has no role in day-to-day school operations. Instead, it deals strictly in academic standards, graduation requirements and charter school accreditation.
In his letter to Gray, Fenty argued that the former Board of Education “meddled in the day-to-day operations of the public schools” and may do so again if given the opportunity.
The council returns from its summer recess Sept. 14, and could vote to override on Sept. 22. Until it does, the city is without a 2010 spending plan.
“I’m prepared to go forward as we had voted previously,” said Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh.
D.C. is allowed to spend local funds immediately upon the budget’s final adoption. City leaders say the District will not shut down Oct. 1 even if Congress has yet to review the final spending plan.
