June 11, 2002 - Baltimore City Public Schools

Board Meeting Minutes
MR. TILDON: I guess I feel like I just want to say ditto. But I was trying, and I've seen these different
times, to just move everything to the left. I'm sort of always on the left side, as opposed to the right.
And, I guess, it's going to take some new innovations. We've talked about trying to raise money. We did
put the barn in. But are we stretching that out to until it is too far, even if we were to move everything up
a year? And then, I guess, I got knocked off my socks when I saw that operating figure. What was it,
180 million?
MR. STREUVER: 118 million.
MR. TILDON: It was over five -- six years.
MR. SMOLARZ: Over the last four years, yes.
MR. TILDON: And that's, obviously, an add-on. It's probably -- I go back, and I just have to have
everyone know that I've been persuaded of the importance of this facility. We've sort of talked about
other aspects of these operations. But our visit to Atlanta -- and the CEO is always telling us facilities,
facilities. But there really is a need for us to think outside the box. Bill is admonishing, but I didn't think
that maybe all of us could get together and try to really think and push everything to the left. I mean, to
get 13 million this year is almost criminal, And for people to tell us that we should be smiling at that. So
it's going to take some doing. But I do think that some different kind of approaches are needed, because
even as we talk, that's only 42 million, which is much less than half. And by the time you get to FY '08,
it'll probably be less than one-third of that.
MS. WELCH: Any other comments? Mr. Smolarz, it is now 10:00, and you're finished?
MR. SMOLARZ: I've still got a couple more items. Thank you.
Page 28 of 41
MS. RUSSO: Thank you very much, gentlemen. And Mr. Smolarz, you're going to stay right there, and
Karen Norris will join too, as we discuss Grant Administration.
MR. SMOLARZ: On Thursday night, the Finance Committee, we had a very healthy discussion about
grants. And we thought that it would be good to share with the Board where we are with our grants
process. And to my left is Ms. Karen Norris, who is our Director of Grants, who has come on board on
October 8th. So when I know the date, that's a good thing, because I was eagerly waiting not only Ms.
Norris, but Mr. Raymond, our CFO, also started on October 8th. So I always remember good days. So
with that introduction, I'll let Ms. Norris go through our Power Point presentation, and then we'll, once
again, take questions.
MS. NORRIS: Great to be here, Mr. Smolarz. And good evening. We're here tonight to give you gist of
what we've been doing in Grants Administration since October. And as the Power Point slide, the first
slide says, in October we established the Department of Grant Administration. And we have divided
ourselves into two primary functions. On one side of the house we take care of grants management, and
on the other side we're looking for new funding under grants acquisitions. In addition to those two
primary functions, we also support schools' goals under the Master Plan, through endorsements,
collaborative greetings with partners, and unsolicited initiatives. And we have released the Grants
Oversight Committee, which I Chair. I think it's also important to note that the department was created
with existing positions, and no positions today have been added, and everyone, except me, were
previously here in the System. So we were able to take staff and use them in a new way to provide new
services. We currently have a restructuring in progress with HR to reclass all positions to better align
them with the new services that we're providing, and to, hopefully, fill the vacancies that we have in the
file://S:\CMS_Content\meetings\2002\J11_02.html
9/23/2002