DATE: Friday, May 23, 1997                  TAG: 9705230684

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   45 lines

TEACHERS AND CHESAPEAKE BOTH GET SOMETHING IN SCHOOL BUDGET

The teachers will get their raise and the city will get its budget cuts in a spending plan approved by the School Board Thursday.

The board unanimously approved $881,700 in cuts requested by the City Council, which last week passed a citywide budget that came up roughly $1.7 million short.

The schools' budget cuts were recommended by Superintendent W. Randolph Nichols.

Of those cuts, nearly half, or $421,292, will be paid for by the sale of some of the district's Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield stock later this summer. Other cuts will come from the district's electricity and telephone accounts.

None of the cuts is expected to affect classroom instruction.

The board also approved what amounts to a 3.3 percent across-the-board raise for teachers, although there was some discussion as to how the money available for raises should be distributed.

What the board passed, 8-1, was a proposal preferred by the Chesapeake Education Association, which represents the city's teachers. Under that plan, teachers at the top of the pay scale would receive a 0.6 percent cost of living raise and a $1,200 ``longevity supplement.'' All other teachers would receive a 0.6 percent cost of living raise plus a 2.7 percent step increase.

In the budget originally proposed in February, teachers at the top of the pay scale were slated to get only a 0.3 percent cost of living increase, amounting to $136 a year.

The proposal passed Thursday was developed because of concerns that the earlier proposal didn't adequately reward teachers who had been with the district the longest.

But James J. Wheaton, the only board member to vote against the plan, said that the ``longevity supplement'' essentially amounted to an extra step at the top of the scale and that the board could be digging a hole for itself by setting such a precedent.

He said that in the past, the district has ended up with unwieldy pay scales after a history of adding steps to the top.

Instead, Wheaton proposed that teachers at the top of the pay scale receive a 2.9 percent cost of living raise without a ``longevity supplement.'' He said that proposal would better preserve the integrity of the step system.

``Next year we're going to be confronted with the same exact problem again,'' said Wheaton.

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