DATE: Friday, October 17, 1997              TAG: 9710160556

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Education 

SOURCE: BY DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   35 lines

TEACHER RAISE TOPS WISH LIST FOR NEXT BUDGET

More funds to expand gifted-education programs, more money to upgrade wiring at some schools, more money to give teachers a 5 percent pay raise.

School administrators received the wish list from a dozen speakers at a recent public hearing before the district starts to prepare its 1998-99 budget.

While the 1997-98 budget was just approved during the summer, school officials already are looking at next year's spending plan. They held the hearing to collect a list of community and employee wants. Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr. said his staff will take the requests, figure cost estimates and present them at the November School Board meeting.

Some of the wants focused on building and ground improvements: a bigger parking lot for Little Creek Elementary, better wiring at Blair Middle School to support technology. But the bulk of requests were for more money for teachers and classified employees, such as secretaries and cafeteria workers.

Teacher wages, salaries and benefits comprise 86 percent of the current $209.7 million budget.

Laura Ramsay, a teacher at Lake Taylor Middle School, said she received a $7 pay increase per paycheck this year and it was too little.

The top teacher salary for 10-month employees is $42,900. That's $4,000 less than Virginia Beach's scale.

``School officials have indicated that teachers at the top of the scale are not important because `They aren't going anywhere,' '' said Ramsay, a 27-year veteran with the district.

``They are in error. We are going somewhere earlier and earlier because the incentive to remain . . . is just not there.''

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