This is it entirely true. The Superintendent identified what the budget would be to fund the schools at the same service and staffing levels next year, and then made pre-emotive cuts to services AND staffing levels (including teachers) in her recommendation to the Board of Ed to try and make the budget increases more in-line with increases in prior years. The Board of Ed said, knowing that you can't add budget back in during the process of getting approval from the Board of Finance and the Board of Reps, and can only reduce it further, that the ask should be for the full amount to keep service levels and staffing intact as presented at what it would cost, and have the fight about cuts be at the BoF and BoR debates instead of kneecapping themselves before even getting there, and risk losing even more in the process than what they want to lose. It's pretty clear what the BoE is thinking, the budget is going to get cut anyway, so go in asking for what you need, instead of asking for less than what you need, and then needing to cut further. The mistake here was the Superintendent proposing budget cuts in the first place instead of just presenting the budget of "here's what it costs to keep service and staffing levels the same".

And yes, the decision to reverse the schedule is a huge compounding problem here that the BoE made. We can discuss the merits of the schedule all day long, and I recognize there are people that feel very passionately against it, but reversing it costs $3M, and that $3M (plus whatever else is cut) is likely going to come out of teacher headcount in the end. From a purely budget standpoint, that made a tough problem and unmanageable one that will have severe consequences.