At 6:26 pm in the Mays Conference Room at CLL, the room was split into two factions. “Team Matt” that consisted of APS Board members and “Team Meria” consisting of the APS Superintendent’s staff members. “We’re all Team Kid” chimes in Cynthia Briscoe-Brown, APS Board Member At-Large, Seat 7. In a FY16 budget meeting scheduled to end at 6 pm (starting at 4 pm), the people around the table have yet to come to any decisions. They then divided up to take additional looks at the proposed budget scenarios to see what else could be done to pick and choose.
The general conversation over the past 2 hours centered around whether funds need to be prioritized for custodial services or an IB-level education. Meria complains about “prehistoric spiders” and urine-stained walls that create a low-quality learning/teaching environment for students/teachers. Board members are persistent on the need for an IB-baseline. Briscoe-Brown jokes (or maybe she is serious) that she will muster an army of parents to clean the bathrooms and Westmoreland quips about a “Board Service Day” setting rat traps.
During this break, several board members seem more concerned with what is being said about them or about APS on Twitter than what is happening in the room. After reconvening, the conversation turns to a focus on the arts and the overall lack of arts access in APS schools.
At the end of the evening, all board members agreed on the budget, except one: Byron Amos, District 2 Board Member. The following Monday, the General Fund Budget passed at $685.6 million. See Superintendent Meria Carstarphen’s thoughts here: http://atlsuper.com/2015/04/20/board-approves-fy16-general-fund-budget-for-aps/
Full notes from the meeting are attached.
A slide deck from a previous APS Board budget meeting is attached as well, however it is not the one used at the meeting, as it had still not been made public as of April 29, 2015.
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FY16 Board Meeting – Budget Discussion
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