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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 4, 1995                   TAG: 9503060025
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOLS WANT $1.83 MILLION MORE FROM CITY|

Radford's schools will seek $1.83 million more from the city for the 1995-96 school year than they got this year. Some last-minute budget fine tuning has cut approximately $31,000 from the initial early January estimate, but Superintendent of Schools Michael Wright said Friday that "there could be other developments" that would lead to further tweaking.

This year, the city contributed just over $4.35 million to the school division's coffers. The schools are seeking $6.18 million from City Council for next year.

Wright briefed the School Board on Thursday on several adjustments to the approximately $10.3 million total budget already submitted for City Council's consideration.

On the plus side of the ledger sheet, the school division can expect $931 from the state above earlier estimates. Wright had earlier projected almost $45,000 more in state revenues this year. The city also anticipates almost $86,900 in grant money for technology that requires a 20 percent local match, Wright explained.

On the other side of the page, the city needs to add a special education teacher to stay in compliance with state requirements. The new position carries a cost of nearly $41,000, including benefits, but also lets the city drop one special education teacher's aide, costing nearly $7,600.

The superintendent also tacked on another $18,000 to provide telephone service for electronic classrooms the city has yet to build, approximately $1,300 for a state-required census, and nearly $3,300 as the local share for students attending summer Governor's Schools and Foreign Language Academy classes.

The city's proposed $45 million-plus budget for 1995-96 already is out of balance by approximately the amount of increase in the school division's budget request. Nearly the entire amount is because of capital requests, including proposed additions and renovations to the city's school buildings plus technology requests that approach $700,000.

Wright gets to discuss the schools' budget request in detail for City Council March 16. Some school officials also planned to attend a red-eye special Saturday morning meeting of City Council today. Among other things, council plans to discuss how to balance the budget and how to pay for capital projects.

The council session at the Radford Public Library also will consider possible taxes on beer kegs and an additional tax on cable television.

by CNB