Capital Article
Huang, Cindy, Public weighs in on proposed school budget, Capital, January 5, 2016.
Snider Comment
A noteworthy political fact that the reporter didn’t report and that anyone who didn’t attend the meeting cannot know first hand (the meeting wasn’t televised) is that only one of the four (25%) second term Board of Education members attended the meeting.
As for the statement “Arlotto also proposed $8.1 million to push back school start times by fall of 2017,” this is technically true. But there is a vast political chasm between being part of Arlotto’s discretionary vs. non-discretionary budget that this verbatim reporting on Arlotto’s proposed budget doesn’t capture. The public needs to be educated about the difference between the Board of Education’s real budget vs. its PR budget, a difference that will never be included in the official “budget” released to the public but is nevertheless critical for public understanding, especially of school board blame game politics. The start times budget item is part of its PR budget.
