Education was the topic of the day at the county commissioners’ Tuesday meeting.
Fay Miller, Kent County Public Schools’ assistant superintendent of administrative services, said the Board of Education had received three bids for the alternative school relocation. The school is currently housed at Rock Hall Elementary School and will be moved to a modular classroom on the grounds of Kent County High School.
The low bid, $148,290 from Modular Genius in Bel Air, includes additional landscaping and technical elements, which were requested by the county’s planning commission.
Miller said she wanted to tell the commissioners about the bid first since they are the ones footing the bill for the relocation, but she will notify the School Board about it so they can vote on it at their Wednesday, July 14 meeting.
“(The Board of Education) are very pleased about this particular bid and would like to move forward with it,” she said.
The modular classroom should be in place by mid-September. Any students assigned to the alternative school will be temporarily housed in 215 Washington Ave. as long as the Board of Education occupies the space. The Board wants to be in their new location, what is now Rock Hall Middle School, by the end of September.
Miller also said that all of the schools that are part of the consolidation have been moved, with the exception of Rock Hall Elementary School. The old alternative school space at RHES will be used as storage and principals start their moves on Thursday.
While Miller was present, Commissioners William Pickrum and Ron Fithian also tackled the difficult topic of school funding.
On Monday, Pickrum, Fithian, Delegate Dick Sossi, Steve Atkinson and Madhu Sidhu met with the State Board of Education to discuss the Thorton funding formula, i.e. how the state determines how much money to give to each county for education.
The formula, which was created by the General Assembly, basically takes the number of students in a county, attaches a base funding amount for each student, then multiplies that number by the county wealth divided by the statewide wealth. It doesn’t take into account that each school system has to fund a superintendent and administration.
“We knew the staff couldn’t change anything, but thought it was a good opportunity to voice our concerns and let Madhu Sidhu (who is on the state board) and Delegate Sossi hear it,” Fithian said.
What really makes the formula unfair to Kent County is the fact that it uses county wealth, which is determined by assessed property values, to calculate the amount of funds the county will receive. In the state’s wealth index, Kent County ranks fourth, which means the state gives the county less money because they assume that county taxpayers can cover more of the education budget than some other larger counties. This explains why Kent’s education budget takes such a big percentage of the total county budget.
“It really comes back to the fourth highest wealth factor in the state,” Miller said. “We’ve been fighting the same fight [for awhile].”
“The bottom line is that this is something that has to be changed by the General Assembly … and it will be reviewed in 2012” Pickrum said. The Eastern Shore delegation may try to tweak it some next session, he said, but he didn’t know how successful the attempt would be.
“Only thing we can do is keep repeating it over and over until someone who is in a position that can do something will do something about it,” Fithian said.
For more information about the Thorton funding formula visit, www.marylandpolicy.org or www.edchoice.org.
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