I was starting to question my intelligence and/or sanity after watching Guilford County Schools Superintendent Mo Green’s budget presentation Tuesday night. Thinking I was either crazy or just plain dumb was about to ruin my weekend, which is why I was glad to see someone else noticed that board member Paul Daniels never got a straight answer when he asked where the cuts were:

“It seems to me that the number for ’09-’10 is bigger than the number from ’08-’09,” school board member Paul Daniels said to Guilford County Schools Chief Financial Officer Sharon Ozment, who presented Green’s recommendations. “Forgive me, but it seems to me, sitting here, that $651 million is bigger than $643 million. My question is, where are the cuts?”

Ozment replied that the budget isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with last year, but that she could prepare one. It was not clear why one year’s school budget couldn’t be compared to the last’s.

…..After the meeting, Daniels, too, said the budget presentation wasn’t intelligible. “The bottom line is that we need to make these budget presentations in a way that’s comprehensible to the average intelligent person,” he said.

Daniels was agreeing with fellow board member Garth Hebert, who’s calling out the secrecy and obfuscation that come out of Green’s so-called ‘private briefings’:

Hebert said he was considering skipping the private briefing, since he hadn’t gotten what he considered honest information from the administration, and he thinks the meetings are a tactic to hide a budgetary discussion from the public. He also said the meetings aren’t useful, because school board members have to attend them without having been presented with hard numbers.

“It’s the third series of meetings they have had, so the board doesn’t have to hear this stuff in public,” Hebert said. “This is insane. We have reached a point where I no longer trust the staff on what they tell me. I won’t vote for another budget amendment, and I won’t vote for another budget. There’s no trust there.”

I’m glad it’s not just me. Now I can enjoy my weekend.