Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 19, 1994 TAG: 9401190190
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARA LEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Board member Lou Hermann suggested that only three new initiatives be added out of 10 the board had explored during its last three work sessions.
She proposed that $99,500 be added for 2 1/2 additional elementary art teachers and the supplies they'd need, that $35,000 be added to replace old musical instruments across the system, and that two more elementary school guidance counselors be hired at a cost of $77,000.
The board members who voted against Hermann's additions - Bob Goncz, Don Lacy, Annette Perkins and Virginia Kennedy - said the $46.2 million budget still was not enough.
Failure to even out the teachers' salary scale was one sore point for the dissenters. "If we go on with just a 3 percent increase on top of the mishmash we've got now, it is just again delaying the inevitable, and it will just cost more the next time," Kennedy said.
Putting off buying new buses worried them as well. "The longer we put anything off, the more it costs us when we get around to it," Kennedy said.
The board members who voted against the budget questioned the $90,000 in administrative budget initiatives - such as voice mail, training for site-based management, and new software for administration computers. "If I had 90,000 to spend, I'd buy two of those four teachers," Perkins said. Four more teachers would be needed to reduce elementary class size to 25.
Perkins added, "I cannot support a budget that says it's OK to continue with the minimum. I can understand why they're looking at economic constraints; there is no one sitting around this table that understands that better than I do," said Perkins, a retired teacher.
But Bartlett worried the Montgomery County supervisors could not support even this small increase over his proposal. With a new elementary school, a 3 percent raise and the initiatives, he will be asking for $1.5 million more in local money, he said.
B.J. Mullins, the Montgomery County representative of the Virginia Education Association, was disappointed by the vote, particularly where class-size reduction and salary scale were concerned. "Certainly it's not the budget we would've preferred," she said.
by CNB