Who's in Charge Around Here?

So, here we go, a ton of thoughts out of the weekend story on the city's use of school funding. A few days later, and we're still fired up about this one.

Last week, when the House slashed Chapter 70 funding and no one from Fitchburg (at least no one who was elected) raised holy hell, we wondered where the city's leadership is. After this weekend's story, we're asking again.

Between the superintendent(s) of schools, mayor, School Committee and City Council, no one thought a $900,000 a year lease was odd? No one found it ridiculous that the city was paying for school nurses in private schools? No one made sure the city was getting its money's worth out of the Museum Partnership? All of this at a time when education funding was tight and the city was scraping for every dollar.

Let's put it this way: The city couldn't afford textbooks or repairs to a roof, but was paying $900,000 a year in lease payments? You have got to be kidding. Hey, here's an idea, buy the furniture store building downtown for like $500,000, rehab it for another $500,000, and then be done with it. That's a year of lease payments for a lifetime. Just and example, but there has to be a better way than spending $900,000 a year. Really, no one thought to at least strongly question that, forget being outraged by it?

The school nurse thing, in particular, sticks in the craw. Essentially, the school system was helping its competition. Inane.

Where was someone to hammer away at this? Who stood up and pointed out this ridiculousness? No one, and that's just plain sad.

Now, let's look at the mayor's reaction to the report.

"It really isn't a matter of Fitchburg spending enough money, it's the state not spending enough money," he said to the Sentinel.

He notes that Chapter 70 funding hasn't increased in five years. If you go from 2002 ($36.6 million) to 2006 ($36.4 million), that's correct. However, funding is slated to go up to about $38 million (although we learned last week that's a fluid figure right now). More importantly, in 2001 Chapter 70 was at $31.8 million. so from 2001 to 2007, funding is up roughly 20 percent. Great? No, a little misleading? Perhaps. But it's a sign that state education aid has generally increased over the last decade.

More importantly, as the state aid spigot slowed, wasn't that the time to take a more careful look at what is going on with spending throughout the city? Wasn't that the time to take another look at $900,000 a year leases? And maybe cut back on school nurses for schools not in the Fitchburg Public Schools?

Finally: A few weeks ago we criticized the newly re-energized override talk for the public schools. We asked a lot of questions that would need to be answered before we'd even consider the question. We have one more question: If you cut your lease by two-thirds (hey, $300,000 a year is still $25,000 a month, and that's good coin), spent the $20,000 the musuem piece is worth according to the state instead of $100,000, and cut the school nurses (and their bennies, we're guessing), wouldn't that annually give you a nice chunk of change to avoid an override?