Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 5, 1994 TAG: 9401050146
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Bartlett's first budget as Montgomery school chief includes only a handful of spending initiatives, including slightly more than $1 million for a proposed 3 percent salary increase for employees.
His 1994-95 budget plan does not include a realignment of teachers' salary schedules, which the Montgomery County Education Association believes would help even out the percentage changes between steps on the pay scale while improving the county's competitiveness with surrounding school systems.
Such a scheme, studied and recommended by a committee of administrators and teachers this past summer, would have cost $3.1 million, Bartlett said. In the fall, the School Board agreed to use the salary plan as a building block for next year's budget, without committing to a specific dollar figure.
But Bartlett said there simply isn't enough money to fund such an approach this coming year.
Education Association President B.J. Mullins said another across-the-board average salary increase would only add more inequity to the county's pay scale and be more expensive to fix in coming years.
The $45.9 million spending plan generally follows the outline of a bare-bones budget that Bartlett and his top aides outlined early last month. Though characterized as a budget that would allow the division only to maintain existing programs and open a new elementary school in the Blacksburg area, the plan still calls for $3.2 million in spending over the current budget.
That figure includes $1.12 million to cover the costs of opening the new school on Prices Fork Road; $364,050 for new teaching positions; $1 million for the pay increase; and $90,600 for seven initiatives, from a study of the school division's history to an electronic voice mail and homework hot-line system.
Bartlett envisions asking the Board of Supervisors to pay for $20.9 million of the school budget with local tax revenues, a 4.6 percent increase. He also sees a nearly 10 percent increase in state funding, to a total of $19.3 million.
Bartlett said he made a conscious effort to focus new spending on salaries, not new programs.
In a related matter, the School Board defeated an effort by one member to ask for a salary increase.
School Board member Barry Worth moved that the county ask Del.-elect Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, to introduce a bill that would increase board members' salaries from $1,800 a year to $3,000. The board voted down the motion 5-2, with Chairman Roy Vickers abstaining.
by CNB