MONTGOMERY SCHOOL BOARD OKS 2 PERCENT PAY RAISE

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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1993                   TAG: 9301200287
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
MONTGOMERY SCHOOL BOARD OKS 2 PERCENT PAY RAISE
The Montgomery County School Board tentatively agreed Tuesday night to ask the Board of Supervisors to fund a 2 percent raise for all school employees next year.
Also in a straw vote, the School Board agreed on a "base budget" of $44.6 million next year, which includes an estimated $700,000 needed for the raises.
The budget would provide money to pay for new regulatory costs, inflation increases, 38.5 new teaching positions and payment on the debt of a new Blacksburg elementary school.
It would not provide funding for several new educational spending proposals offered by Superintendent Harold Dodge and individual board members.
Dodge, disappointed by the decision, said Montgomery County, which, in the past, has been the "lighthouse" for education in Southwest Virginia, is "close to becoming the outhouse."
The board also agreed to include several of Dodge's and its own educational initiatives in a separate budget version that it would call its "preferred budget." That budget would include an additional $2.15 million in spending for such items as more kindergarten teachers, first-grade and special-education aides, reading specialists, elementary guidance counselors, and computer labs for gifted students.
The Board of Supervisors asked the School Board in September to write a budget based on the current years $41.3 million budget, but the supervisors have never explained to the School Board whether they were to count on additional money for the new school, inflation or other unavoidable cost increases. The county's share of the current year's budget is $18.9 million.
The School Board will have to wrap up its budget by Thursday night's special budget meeting because it has scheduled a public hearing on the budget at Christiansburg High School for 7:30 p.m. next Tuesday. The budget has to be presented to the supervisors by Feb. 1.
The preliminary agreement on a 2 percent across-the-board raise for school employees did not please members of the Montgomery County Education Association. The association, which represents most of the county's teachers, asked for an average 4.5 percent pay increase for teachers and had hoped the board would agree to a new, fairer salary scale.
The board essentially decided, however, that rewriting the salary scale is a bigger and more expensive project than it can afford to tackle this year.
Dodge wasn't happy with the decision to limit the raises, either, saying that county government and citizens are going to have to eventually come to the grips with the fact that Montgomery County is slipping when compared with other Southwest Virginia localities.
Memo: Correction

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB