What happened:
Superintendent Clayton Wilcox unveiled his first budget proposal as head of CMS, outlining the priorities he wants to spend more money on next school year.
Key facts:
The big thing is school safety. This breaks down into a few big buckets.
Mental/emotional support staff ($4.4 million)
- 33 new elementary school counselors
- 17 new school social workers
- 10 new school psychologists
Physical security ($9.8 million)
- Hardened doors and windows with extra locks, reinforced glass and tinted film.
- Fencing and perimeter controls
- In-classroom cameras and more video monitoring.
- 5 new police officers, 2 locksmiths and 2 electronics specialists.
Other major components of the budget:
- 7% pay raise for teachers
- 3% pay raise for admins/staff
- $500,000 for more diversity training for teachers. Only 800 out of 9,400 teachers would get it, though.
- 46 new custodians
- $40 million in new county funding. Note: CMS rarely gets everything it asks for from the county commissioners.
Why this matters:
The physical safety component will be a tough needle to thread. We all want safer schools, but the execution at the individual campus level will be critical. Nobody wants a school to look and feel like a prison.
The custodian proposal is also super interesting. This is reflective of Wilcox’s philosophy on school culture. He came in and immediately started mowing lawns himself. Wilcox believes that a nice-looking school has spillover effects — almost like the “broken windows” model of policing.
It’s also notable that Wilcox is branding this as a “call to action” instead of the usual government bureaucracy. It’s just marketing, but CMS’s destiny is controlled by the state legislature and county commissioners so marketing is important.
