Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 12, 1991 TAG: 9104120652
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
The board unanimously voted to allow the raises, which will vary from employee to employee but average about 1 percent.
Teachers will advance a step on the school system's pay ladder, although the pay scale itself will remain the same.
For teachers with relatively little experience or with many years in the system, that could mean raises as small as 0.25 percent, according to Superintendent John Kent. For mid-career teachers, it could mean raises of 2 percent.
For teachers at the top end of the pay ladder - with 25 years experience or more - it will mean no raise. Kent said relatively few of the county's 570 teachers fall into that category.
The starting salary for teachers will remain at $23,002, as it was this year.
Other school employees will get a straight 1 percent raise, Kent said. The step pay scale is not used for those employees.
The salary increases will cost the school system $282,724 next year, Kent said.
The School Board earlier had proposed giving its employees a 2.5 percent pay increase.
But when the county Board of Supervisors passed its budget this week, it cut about $730,000 that would have financed that raise.
The supervisors, who opted not to give other county employees salary increases next year, said it would not be equitable to give raises to school employees.
The School Board felt differently.
The supervisors can authorize the School Board to spend specific amounts of money in specific categories but cannot designate line-item spending, School Board members reminded each other during discussion.
"I don't think we can let the people dictate to us how we can run our system," board member Russell P. Wright said. "We may have to lock horns with members of the Board of the Supervisors. . . . So be it."
Before choosing the 1 percent raise, School Board members looked at three possible options for dealing with employee salaries next year.
Other options Kent offered included freezing salaries altogether, as the supervisors apparently intended, or reducing salaries by 1 percent.
But under any of the three alternatives, the School Board still would come out with a deficit situation based on the $35.8 million the county authorized schools to spend, Kent said.
Since the budget process began in February, the School Board and the county supervisors have not agreed on the costs of salary increases.
As they cut $730,000 from the school's allocation, supervisors said that amount would have funded the requested 2.5 percent raise. However, Kent said that a smaller sum - closer to half a million dollars - should have been cut if the purpose was to erase the proposed 2.5 percent raise.
In addition, he said, the supervisors did not consider another $144,242 that will be lost in expected revenues.
Given the discrepancies and the 1 percent pay raise agreed to Thursday night, the School Board will need to find another $460,547 to balance its budget before the spending plan is completed in June.
They set a work session for May 9 to look at a possible $1.3 million in items to cut.
by CNB