A school district’s ability to show fiscal responsibility is a key to sustaining taxpayer support.  The trend is for personnel costs, particularly benefits, to rise at a faster rate than the legal property tax maximum increase of 2%.  The BOE must cut other expenses to balance the budget.  Every year, expenditures in areas such as building maintenance, textbooks, and other educational supplies are put under pressure.  To handle this situation, school board members  need to uncover new budgeting opportunities that allow the schools to continue to improve educational quality, while preserving fiscal responsibility.

Establishing video coverage of the Board of Education meetings would increase the community’s ability to ensure that fiscal responsibility is highly-valued at each step of the education improvement process. The annual cost of video coverage is nominal compared to the opportunities to save money when such large budget sums are under discussion. By allowing a larger segment of the community to follow the Board’s proceedings, more people would be able to come up with sound cost-saving suggestions.