THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 19, 1995 TAG: 9504190419
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
Schools superintendent Sidney L. Faucette tried Tuesday to teach City Council members how to add, but most of them didn't buy his calculations.
Faucette insisted that City Manager James K. Spore wants to cut his budget by at least $6.1 million; Spore said it's $3.8 million; Council member Barbara M. Henley said Faucette was adding a proposed state grant to the budget gap, instead of subtracting it.
City and school officials met for more than four hours Tuesday to try to resolve their budget differences.
The speeches on both sides were conciliatory, but by the end, people still couldn't agree on something as basic as the bottom line.
Board chairwoman June T. Kernutt opened the morning's discussion with a plea for the council to help her improve relations between the City Hall and the school district. Arguments between the two bodies need not be an ``annual rite of spring'' every budget season, Kernutt said.
``We can be the ones to end it,'' she said, ``and we can end it today.''
But the meeting concluded with a concession that the tension will never go away entirely.
It can't, Faucette said, because the city holds the school's purse strings and the School Board's power to set policy is established in the state Constitution.
``I don't know of any city in America that doesn't have this tension,'' he said, adding that the ``golden rule of school finance is: He who has the gold makes the rules.''
Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf characterized the disagreements as ``healthy tension,'' and School Board member Ulysses V. Spiva said the face-to-face meeting helped defuse some of the hard feelings.
Faucette agreed to present the council with a detailed accounting of all the remaining, unresolved issues, ranging from the money needed for improvements to schools with indoor air quality problems to the status of portable classrooms, to the full history of the district's involvement in the Celebration Station shopping mall-turned education complex on Virginia Beach Boulevard.
And several agreements were reached:
The proposed construction budget, although it is smaller than the School Board requested, would not add to the number of portable classrooms, as had been suggested. A dramatic increase in the number of special education students is contributing to the continued need for portables, Faucette said.
The cost of relocating Seatack and Linkhorn Elementary Schools, which are in the flight path of the Oceana Naval Air Station, will not take away from other school funding, City Director of Management and Budget E. Dean Block told the council.
The cost of adding classrooms to many of the city's overcrowded schools rose significantly because of increased construction costs and new libraries for the elementary schools. There is money already budgeted for classroom additions to 13 elementary schools and the construction of a gymnasium at Hermitage Elementary School.
The district would need $10.5 million more to complete additions to Kingston Elementary School, Plaza Middle School, Kellam High School, Kempsville Middle School and First Colonial High School, Anthony L. Arnold, director of facilities planning and construction for the schools, said.
Despite many attempts at civility, city and school officials clearly got on each other's nerves Tuesday.
At one point, Faucette characterized differences over city funding for school additions as a ``dispute.''
Block responded: ``It's not a dispute.''
Faucette: ``It's a dispute.''
Block: ``If you want to make it one, Sid.''
Faucette: ``I did.''
At a public hearing on the budget later, the council came under fire from school advocates who wanted the construction money returned to the budget. Other speakers argued for cuts to the manager's proposed $838 million budget to avoid the need for a proposed 4.8-cent tax rate increase.
Several council members said later that they would like to find money, at minimum, to make repairs to First Colonial High School. Faucette said the nearly $5 million spent at the high school over the last several years did not buy as much as it should have because of repeated problems: ``It defied every law Murphy ever wrote,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA/
On the screen, Sandy Fruit - president of Kellam High's Parent
Teacher Student Association - speaks about the condition of the
school at Tuesday's public hearing. The council came under fire at
the hearing for removing construction money from the budget.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH SCHOOLS VIRGINIA BEACH CITY COUNCIL BUDGET
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