ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 28, 1996 TAG: 9605280103
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: reporter's notebook
SOURCE: Lisa Applegate
Food stamps for Montgomery County teachers?
At least three teachers who responded anonymously to a survey on salaries recently said they could qualify for federal aid.
The responses, given by about half of the 600 teachers in the county, surprised the members of the Montgomery County Education Association who developed the survey.
They expected to find that half of those who responded were moonlighting, earning extra money by coaching a sport or actually finding an extra job.
The members didn't expect to hear that some teachers can barely pay the bills each month, much less continue their education or save for their children's college tuition.
It's impossible to tell whether a person is eligible for food stamps or other types of assistance designed to help low- and middle-class families. Dan Farris, director of Montgomery County Social Services, said other factors add into the formula.
A person can be making a relatively comfortable income, but student loans or other debts, child support or lack of it, illness or other problems skew the ability to survive.
"That's why we sometimes have neighbors calling to say, 'Well, so-and-so is living just fine, but they're on assistance,'" Farris said. "There are so many other things that play into it."
There are also many factors that play into how Montgomery County's teacher pay stacks up with its neighbors. While the salary survey paints a woeful picture, in numbers alone Montgomery County's starting pay and pay after 20 years are competitive with other school systems in the New River Valley, statistics show. Radford's small school system, and Pulaski County's outpace Montgomery, while it in turn is ahead of Giles and Floyd counties. Only Radford, though, comes near matching the Roanoke and Roanoke County school systems' salary scales.
Last week, the county School Board managed to squeeze a 4 percent increase in employee salaries out of an extremely tight budget.
Many teachers and school administrators say the School Board is limited in what it can do for salaries by a Board of Supervisors that routinely places school funding as its lowest priority. According to teachers who responded to the survey, the county schools are losing teachers by high salaries in other school systems.
Rather than just comparing the numbers, though, they point to Montgomery County's ability to pay, an evaluation of how well a county funds its public schools based on the tax revenue available.
One indicator is the local composite index, derived from true values of real estate, adjusted gross income and retail sales.
Based on 1994 figures, Montgomery County rates 62nd in the state in its composite index; almost twice as high as Giles County, for example.
Yet Giles ranks in the top 20 for the effort it makes to fund schools, while Montgomery ranks in the bottom half.
Those numbers, said Montgomery County Supervisor Nick Rush, imply that citizens aren't being taxed enough. On the contrary, he said, residents don't want to pay any more in taxes. Rush is one of the seven Board of Supervisors members who set tax rates every spring to pay for school and other county budgets.
And his proof?
"I ran against a candidate who approved all kinds of tax increases - I called for reasonable growth."
Other members of the Board of Supervisors who share the same fiscally conservative views as Rush have been re-elected time and again.
The solution, Rush said, is up to the School Board.
"It's not a matter of not enough funding. ... You have to set priorities on a budget."
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart by staff: Teacher salaries 1995-96.by CNB