Here’s how a budget works. You have some income to work with (a salary, for example, or a pension, or the interest from some investments), and you figure out how you’re going to live within that income. This is true whether you’re talking about a household or a business. With a budget, income limits expenditures.
In contrast, here’s how a ransom works. You hold someone (or something — a home, for example) hostage, demand some amount of money that you’d like to have, and agree to release the hostage if the demand is met. With a ransom, desires determine income.
Which of those more accurately describes the ‘budgeting’ process that school districts go through each year?
How different would that process look if we took Confucius’s advice to call things by their right names? ‘The Ransom Committee provides input to the School Board and Administration on the ransom needed to pick up the tab for the desires of the District and Board.’
