District considers budget consultant

MANATEE COUNTY — After an independent review of the Sarasota County Public School District budget identified potential savings of more than $23 million over the next five years, the Manatee County School District may follow suit in hiring an independent consultant to review at least portions of its budget.

Superintendent Tim McGonegal said he has been following the progress of MGT of America, the company hired by a group of local business professionals to conduct the review of Sarasota County schools, and now plans to discuss the results with Sarasota County Schools Superintendent Lori White to see how valuable the study will be to the district.

McGonegal said he likely will make a recommendation to School Board members about whether to hire MGT, or another consultant, in April.

“I really wanted to wait and see Sarasota’s budget,” McGonegal said. “The value of doing (something like hiring MGT) is you have independent, third-party eyes on the process to see if you can achieve some efficiencies in what you are doing.”

Manatee County School Board members currently are working through the budget line by line to trim expenses, McGonegal said.

Manatee County conducted a smaller review study of its information technology department about two years ago, and results showed the department was working smoothly and cost effectively, McGonegal said. Then, in June 2010, to shave even more dollars off the budget, the district contracted with a telephone-auditing group for about $7,500.

“We knew we had done everything we could do and needed someone from the outside,” McGonegal said. “(The auditing company) saved us $160,000.

“I think it’s valuable we do this on a regular basis to have somebody from the outside come in to review our processes and try to save us money,” he said.

McGonegal noted the district likely will not be able to afford a comprehensive budget review like Sarasota County’s report, of which the community paid 100% of the $114,500 cost, but the district will do what it needs to do to meet budget restraints.

“I don’t think we could afford to do that or raise that much money,” McGonegal said. “We’d probably have a scaled-back version. It’ll be in April that I’ll make a recommendation to do it, not or do pieces of it.”

Gary Leatherman, communications direction for the Sarasota County School Board, said MGT was hired at the suggestion and expense of a group called Citizens for Academic Success and Excellence as the district faced cutting another $14 million from its budget last fall. The district already had shaved $116 million through cuts and cost avoidance over the last three years, he said.

After representatives of MGT worked with Sarasota County officials and employees to collect data in November, they reviewed information until announcing results of the completed report March 2.

Leatherman said many of the suggestions being made by MGT are ones the School Board already has considered in past but declined to implement for various reasons. Others also will require an initial investment before savings are returned, or may have more long-term savings.

“We are primarily interested in anything that will have a financial impact for next year,” Leatherman said. “I am in the middle of working on a report back to our School Board to provide them staff recommendations, as far as which of the various recommendations will be practical and feasible for us to go forward with.

“It sort of remains to be seen how the board will respond,” he said. “There wasn’t really anything in the recommendations that were particularly new ideas.”

MGT Project Director Ralph “Skip” Archibald said the Sarasota district was one of the best MGT had analyzed in the country and that estimated savings of up to about $24 million would be a conservative estimate of savings.

Recommendations include suggestions such as a review of the extended school day, a review of salary schedules and shifting from using seniority as the primary assignment of teachers to positions.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].