It was a relatively quiet and unusually short Baltimore school board meeting last night, with the most significant agenda item -- a vote on contracts for operators to run new combined middle/high schools -- delayed to give board members more time to review the proposal.

In the coming weeks, expect a whirlwind of activity, especially when Dr. Alonso releases his proposed budget on March 11, containing $50 million in cuts.

But even at a quiet board meeting, two things happened that are indicative of what's to come: giving principals more autonomy in exchange for accountability, and doing "more with less" -- without (supposedly) harming the children.

1) The board approved textbooks for use in several subject areas. Unlike prior textbook adoptions, though, there was no dollar amount designated to be spent on any particular book. In most cases, the board approved a few books for a given subject. Principals can choose which one they want and use money from their budgets to buy it. And if a principal doesn't like any of the choices, he or she may submit a recommendation for another book to Alonso's staff, along with a justification for the recommendation and an outline of the student outcomes it's expected to produce. 

2) Administrators outlined the proposed structure for summer school. The plan is to spend $7.3 million on summer school this year, down from $11.6 million last year, while serving the same number of students (23,738 attended summer school last year; the estimate for this year is somewhere between 23,000 and 24,000). Alonso and his chief academic officer, Mary Minter, told me a couple factors explain how they can serve the same number of children with $4.3 million less. Instead of offering a summer program at every elementary school, 35 buildings will each serve students from between two and four schools, cutting down on operational costs. (There will also be 42 "standalone" sites, or schools with their own programs.) At the 35 buildings, staff from schools in the same "cluster" will design their program together. They can select, for example, which principal will preside over the summer session, or whether multiple princpals want to rotate responsibility. Alonso said that the staffing model for summer school funding will be leaner, with money cut for nonessential positions, such as "lead teachers." There will also be less money spent on materials. Two years ago, the system spent $9 million on summer school and served 23,510 students. Last year, Alonso said, the summer school budget increased by more than $2.5 million, but almost no additional students were served. A key change this year is that elementary and middle summer programs will be open to all students, not just those in Title 1 schools. (As a result, much of the money for summer school will come out of the budget's general fund, rather than Title 1 funding.)

This morning, Dr. Alonso went before the state school board to provide the city school system's annual report. There were way too many PowerPoint slides for me to get into the contents of all of them. But for the record:

The system's official graduation rate declined slightly from 2006 to 2007, from 60.63 percent, to 60.05 percent. One would assume that means the dropout rate incrased slightly. Nope. On the books, it also declined, from 10.52 percent to 9.56 percent. How is this possible? Alonso said he doesn't know, either.

In an interview after the state briefing, Alonso told reporters not to assume that $50 million in budget cuts is going to mean mass layoffs, like what happened during the deficit of 2003. After all, the system has more than 800 teaching vacancies every year. There will be jobs for everyone who's willing to work in a school. There also be pay cuts (and, I bet, a lot of resignations).

Get ready for an interesting spring.