Does IPN Truly Understand

Zero-Based Budgeting?

To the Editor:

The “zero-based budgeting” (ZBB) proposal of the IPN sounds simple and makes a good sound byte, but in fact it is extremely complicated, is not cost effective, and is terribly impracticable for a school or municipality. Most experts agree that attempts fail miserably at the state and local levels.  It is typically ineffective, and is extremely cost prohibitive at the education and local government levels. Scarce resources are expended on layers of administrators instead of teachers.

So what is zero-based budgeting? ZBB is a system that requires each program be justified in each fiscal year. It requires low level employees to prepare individual decision units that are then aggregated into decision packages on the basis of multiple potential activities (three, four, or five possibilities), program goals, organizational units and so forth. Costs of goods are attached to each decision package on the basis of the level or production or service to be provided to produce defined outputs or outcomes. Decision units are then ranked by the importance of reaching organizational goals and objectives. These are then repeated at multiple levels of administration. They are highly subjective decisions and processes. It has constantly been pointed out that because there are minimal levels of service choices in schools due to required state regulations, ZBB is of modest application at best, and rarely cost efficient. ZBB is only effective if significant plans for substantial cuts in curriculum and staffing are the mandated goal. If IPN truly understands ZBB, then logically the IPN must be seeking drastic cuts in school, curriculum, and teachers! If they are not proposing such drastic cuts, then it would appear that they don’t fully understand ZBB. You can’t have it both ways with ZBB.

So let’s see which is which. We can do it by simply asking 21 questions with subparts (a familiar method for IPN, lol). These 21 questions contain inquiry and information that certainly must have been secured before making ZBB part of its core political platform. Chris Lyddy will provide you the 21 questions in his letter to the editor. As a basis for my opposition, I’ll rely on my own business experience and the expert studies such as the highly authoritative study of Hammond and Knott (1980). “All evidence suggests that [ZBB] played a negligible role...in shifting of financial resources [of education]... in Texas, New Jersey and Delaware.” Likewise, Gilmour and Lewis, Assessing Performance Assessment for Budgeting, Oxford University Press (2005) is highly critical of ZBB, particularly in government and schools.

I’ll be glad to reassess next week after I receive the answers to the 21 questions. Otherwise, I request IPN to abandon this terrible part of its platform.

(I am vice chairperson of the Board of Finance, friends with the Rosenthals, the Borsts, and the Davises, have two children in the school system, and am a member of the same church as Herb and Joe Bojnowski. I can’t believe I have to waste limited space categorizing myself. It makes me sad for our town).

Thank you.

James O. Gaston

18 Main Street, Newtown                                           October 10, 2007