Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993 TAG: 9302240252
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
SCHOOLS BUDGET INCLUDES MONTGOMERY SPORTS CUTS
Not increasing the school budget next year could mean the final buzzer for interscholastic athletics in Montgomery County, Superintendent Harold Dodge told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night.Other programs that might have to be cut from the budget if next year's funding is not increased are elementary art, music and physical education teachers; teachers for gifted students; and the purchase of new school buses, Dodge said.
In December, the Board of Supervisors directed the School Board and other county departments to prepare budgets that contained no spending increases.
An exception in the School Board's case was the money needed to make a debt payment on a new Blacksburg elementary school, construction of which is expected to begin this year.
The School Board responded in January by approving three alternative budget plans. The smallest, which the board dubbed its "educationally minimum" budget, called for spending $42.8 million next year, roughly 4 percent more than this year's $41.3 million budget.
The minimum budget does not contain money for raises for school employees. It does provide additional spending to:
Comply with new state and federal regulations.
Compensate for increased costs due to inflation.
Provide 18.5 new teachers required by Virginia's standards-of-quality law and five mobile classrooms to house some of those teachers.
And money to pay the debt on the new school.
The school system would face loss of accreditation of its elementary schools if it didn't provide the teachers that increased enrollments require, Dodge said.
The total increase in spending proposed in the minimum budget is $1.6 million, of which the local share would be roughly $1 million or slightly more tham a 3-cent increase in the county's 70-cent real-estate tax. However, the figure can be reduced somewhat because of the supervisors' decision not to sell all the bonds needed to pay for the new school at the start of construction.
The School Board also presented the board what it called its "educationally responsible" budget of $48.3 million, which Dodge explained to the supervisors in detail, and an "educationally essential" alternative of $44.4 million. These two larger budgets contain money for raises.
However, the supervisors were not satisfied with the three proposals and directed the School Board last week to bring them a budget Tuesday night complying with their original request for no spending increases except for the new school.
Dodge told the supervisors that the School Board never intended to ignore their budget instructions. "There was never an intent to do that," he said. But the School Board has a responsibility to provide what it thinks the school system needs, he said.
He explained that in order to pay for the additional costs the schools expect to face next year without a budget increase, the School Board would have to cut more than $600,000 in other areas.
Cutting interscholastic athletics could make up $300,000 of that shortfall, he said.
The supervisors will discuss the school budget during their overall county budget deliberations, which continue tonight and Saturday.
The supervisors have a public hearing scheduled on the county budget for March 18.
Also Tuesday night, the supervisors approved preparation of a preliminary design for a new Blacksburg branch library. The board deferred a decision, however, on whether to tear down the old library building.