NEW RIVER SCHOOLS FACE MAJOR FUNDS CUTS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 3, 1993                   TAG: 9303030282
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
NEW RIVER SCHOOLS FACE MAJOR FUNDS CUTS
State funding cuts for neighboring New River Valley school districts are nowhere near as severe as the one facing Pulaski County next year.
But valley school districts are losing state money because of declining sales tax revenues and, in some cases, smaller enrollments.
In Pulaski County, state funding declines, combined with employee raises recommended by the General Assembly and other costs, could create a budget shortfall up to $800,000, Superintendent of School William Asbury told the Board of Supervisors Monday night.
On the other hand, in Montgomery County the impact of the reduced state money and recommended raises will be $223,686, according to a memo Tuesday from the school finance chief, Dan Morris, to Superintendent Harold Dodge.
In Montgomery and other school divisions, the suspension of the Virginia Retirement System's life insurance premium for local school divisions next year and the money the General Assembly provided for raises will help offset cuts because of lower sales tax money and declining enrollments.
In Montgomery, for instance, the county is losing $125,844 in sales tax and basic state aid. But that is being more than offset by gains of $237,696 for raises and $189,109 from not having to pay the VRS premium.
But, the local districts can't win for losing.
That's because the additional money the legislature is providing for raises will cost the localities even more money.
The legislature is providing $25.2 million statewide, or enough for its share of the 3 percent raises for teachers and 2 percent raises for other school employees.
The raises won't take effect until Dec. 1, which means teachers actually are getting a 1.75 percent raise and other employees, 1.17 percent. Local school districts will have to come up with the rest of the raises.
But they will have to come up with even more money than that if they provide the raises as the General Assembly intended. That's because the state is funding raises only for the number of teachers required to meet the state's minimum standards of quality.
School districts typically have many more teachers than those standards require.
Montgomery County, for example, has 642 teachers, but only 546 of them are required by the standards of quality. The county's share of school funding, according to the state's formula, is 35 percent. But the county will have to come up with roughly $280,000 to provide the raises the legislature has requested - $40,000 more than the state will provide for the raises.
Another example of the impact of the General Assembly's raise for teachers is in Giles County. It is getting $87,000 from the state to pay for raises for its 313 employees, but it costs the county $95,000 to raise salaries only 1 percentage point.
In Floyd County, Superintendent Omar Ross said the county expects to get $5.5 million from the state next year, or roughly $50,000 less than it got this year. The county has lost about 35 students, Ross said.
The problem with declining enrollment is that it's spread across all grades, Ross said. Often, not enough students are lost in any one grade to justify cutting a teaching position, the best way to cut a budget.
In Radford, Superintendent Michael Wright had a different sort of problem.
Wright was suspicious of the $673,000 sales-tax revenue estimate that the state had sent him. He called it "very optimistic" and predicted the real figure would be closer to the $596,000.
Wright was unwilling to guess how the state figures he got this week will affect his budget's bottom line.
While some other area school divisions have been losing students, Radford has managed to keep the problem at bay with the help of tuition students from outside the city.
A few years ago, the School Board reduced tuition from $500 to $100 to encourage out-of-towners to attend city schools. This year, Radford's schools have accepted 147 paying students on a space-available basis. And the city also gets the state money for each one.
Staff writer Rick Lindquist contributed information to this story.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB