BALTIMORE – Poor financial management seems to be a long-term, ongoing issue in the Baltimore City school district.

The words of an April, 2014 editorial written by a local television station general manager sum up the situation:

“History is certainly repeating itself for the Baltimore City Public School system.

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“Last week, school officials presented a budget scenario showing a $31 million possible shortfall, just as they did in 2004.

“Apparently, in the process of developing ‘Great Schools, Great Kids’ as is their motto, no one was watching or counting the purse strings. Now, officials are looking at options, including staff layoffs, reduced funding or key reforms or dipping into reserves to maintain current levels of funding.

“It’s eight months into the school year and tough decisions will have to be made. Ideally, those decisions will be made in the best interests of the great students in city schools.”

It would be one thing if the school district continually ran into money problems because it spent too much money on children. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Instead, the Baltimore district seems to have the same problem plaguing public schools throughout the nation: Very high labor costs, brought about the presence of a powerful local teachers union and a school board that specializes in bowing to union demands.

EAGnews has been pouring through financial records in recent years, identifying the most typical ways that K-12 public schools waste tax dollars that could and should be spent on student needs.

A big problem derives from overly generous policies regarding paid days off for employees.

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The Baltimore Teachers Union contract is even more generous and wasteful than most.

While contracts in typical districts give employees 10 days of paid sick leave and perhaps 2-3 paid personal days for a nine-month work year of about 180-190 days, the Baltimore contract provides 15 days of paid sick leave and one day of paid personal leave.

When teachers are granted tenure, after two years, 10 extra days are added to their cumulative sick day banks.

The contract also includes provisions that encourage the use of those paid days off. One provision, for example, says “up to five days of accumulated sick leave may be used by the teacher in the case of illness in the teacher’s immediate family as defined by Board rules.”

Does that mean a teacher can stay home and be paid for five days because his wife has the flu?

Another provision says “Each employee shall be permitted to use up to three (3) days per year of accumulated sick leave for necessary personal business…”

What’s the result of all these paid sick days, and policies that encourage so much absenteeism?

In the 2013-14 school year, 8,698 Baltimore school employees took a combined 81,355 sick days (an average of 9.3 sick days per employee) and 7,423 employees took 15,298 personal days.

They earned a combined $25 million for days they were not at work.

The personal and sick days missed specifically by teachers forced the district to spend another $7 million in wages for substitute teachers.

Of course Baltimore, like most school districts, offers incentives for good attendance. But those cost a lot of money, too.

Teachers in the district are allowed to accumulate up to 315 unused sick days. And they are very valuable.

One union contract provision says, “For every four days of sick leave accumulated during the sick leave year, an employee may convert one (1) day to cash, at his rate of pay at the time of conversion, and retain the remaining three (3) days in his sick leave account.”

Another provision says employees who have completed at least 20 years of service to the district, regardless of age, are allowed to take the equivalent of one day’s pay for every four days of accumulated unused sick leave, when they retire or leave the district for any other reason.”

In 2013-14, the Baltimore school district paid 7,120 employees a total of $8.2 million in compensation for unused sick days.

The local media has taken note of this troubling use of education dollars.

“The millions of dollars of unused vacation and sick leave Baltimore shells out annually to its teachers are a sign the school system is still struggling to contain its costs,” the Baltimore Sun wrote in an editorial. “At a time when budgets are tight and benefits have been cut by private employers and many local governments, Baltimore’s policy is clearly unsustainable.

“School officials need to face up to the problem squarely and devise a plan to bring the cost of such perks more into line with current fiscal realities.”

That editorial was published in 2012. Obviously school officials have not altered their practices for the better.