Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993 TAG: 9301220305
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
SCHOOL BUDGET CHOICE OFFERED
The Montgomery County School Board has prepared a multiple-choice budget test for the Board of Supervisors this year.Thursday night the School Board settled on three budgets that it will present to a public hearing Tuesday night and eventually give to the supervisors.
The School Board settled on a "preferred" budget, which totals $48.14 million and is roughly 16 percent above the current $41.3 million budget. The board also developed an "essential" budget, which totals $44.5 million, 8 percent more.
Finally, the board agreed on a "minimum" budget of $42.9 million, or 3.9 percent more. The board considers the minimum budget its answer to the Board of Supervisors' advice in December to prepare a budget containing the same funding as the current year.
The minimum budget contains no raises for school employees. The essential budget contains a 2 percent across-the-board raise, and the preferred budget contains raises averaging 7.7 percent and puts county teachers back on an equalized salary scale.
Mike Reilly, co-chairman of the Montgomery County Education Association's salary committee, was not happy as he watched the board make its decision.
"If we send over [to the supervisors] three separate budgets, they're going to take the lowest one and cut from there," Reilly said.
Superintendent Harold Dodge was similarly concerned. The minimum budget will be the School Board's budget next year, he warned the board.
"If you send the minimum over, you have devalued our school division," he said.
The biggest item in the board's proposed minimum budget, increasing it over the current year's budget, is $751,100 for 18 1/2 new teaching positions that are required by the state standards of quality to accommodate anticipated growth in enrollment. Also included is $439,173 for debt service on the new Blacksburg Elementary School and $250,000 to comply with new state and federal rules on underground tanks and students with disabilities, among other things.
The board's essential budget adds $666,388 to the minimum budget to pay for the 2 percent across-the-board salary increase and another $800,000 to pay for 20 more teaching positions that the school administration says are needed to keep pupil-teacher ratios at manageable levels in the elementary grades.
Not everyone was in agreement, however, with the 2 percent raise.
Asked by fellow board member Annette Perkins if he didn't think a raise for employees was essential, Barry Worth of Christiansburg said, "I think if the teachers are dedicated enough and the administration is dedicated enough, they can go without a salary increase at all."
But Dodge said even a 2 percent increase is not a raise, considering the impact of inflation. "For God's sake, let's just keep what we've got," he urged the board.
In addition to money for a larger raise, the board's preferred budget includes an added $2.3 million in educational initiatives proposed by the administration and individual School Board members, including money for reading specialists, further reductions in the pupil-teacher ratio and more foreign language classes.
The board decided to put its support behind the $48.14 million preferred budget - which member Don Lacy said was still one step away from providing "world-class education" - and to offer the other two alternatives to the supervisors as potential ways to make any needed cuts.
Although most board members supported the largest budget, they seemed resigned that it probably would be cut drastically by the supervisors.