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| At Henry County School Board hearing Thursday |
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Friday, January 15, 2010
By PAUL COLLINS - Bulletin Staff Writer
Speakers urged the Henry County School Board on Thursday to maintain funding for instruction and school resource officers in the 2010-11 budget.
Dorothy Carter, president of the Henry County Education Association, and Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry were the only two people who spoke at a school board public hearing. The hearing was held to receive residents’ comments for consideration in preparing the 2010-11 (fiscal 2011) school budget.
The school district would lose $3,127,127 in funding in fiscal 2011 under a budget proposed in December by Gov. Tim Kaine. That is in addition to a reduction of $2,267,098 in funds this budget year (fiscal 2010), which will end June 30.
The total cuts for the two years would be $5,394,225.
Carter said the Henry County Education Association “endorses the continuation of a professional teacher salary schedule with lanes which compensate for advanced course work and a limited number of steps that maximize career earnings.” The HCEA’s specific requests include:
• “Maintaining staffing, programs and activities that relate directly to the delivery of instruction.
• “Making an effort to provide a step increase on the salary schedule for 2010-11 for each employee eligible to receive such an increase.
• “Maintaining the current level of benefits for all employees.
• “Continuing efforts to establish a consistent pattern of increments between steps.
• “Supporting a living wage for education support professionals.”
“This is a tough economy,” Carter said, and teachers understand that. She added that some teachers are the sole support of their families, and some teachers’ spouses are out of work.
Perry told the board that the sheriff’s office would not be able to make up any shortfall in funding for school resource officers.
Title IV-Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act is being eliminated in fiscal 2010, said Dawn Lawson, the school district’s chief financial officer. That money, about $34,500, helps pay for school resource officers, she has said.
Perry said there are four resource officers (at Fieldale-Collinsville Middle, Laurel Park Middle, Bassett High and Magna Vista High). The sheriff’s office supplements the cost of three of them by providing higher-caliber officers, and it provides the fourth officer, Perry said.
Benefits of having school resource officers include having an extra level of security and comfort and being able to immediately respond to problems, Perry said. Also, he said, officers can sometimes gain information on, for instance, problems such as gangs in the schools.
Lawson said Superintendent Anthony Jackson is scheduled to present a proposed fiscal 2011 budget to the school board March 4.
Budget updates are being posted on the school system’s Web site (www.henry.k12.va.us — click on budget update 2010-2011), and anyone who wants to give input or ideas as the budget is being developed should e-mail feedback@henry.k12.va.us.
“We’re getting some really good comments” through the Web site, Jackson said. He also commended staff for understanding the budget challenges and providing creative ideas at roundtable meetings he has been holding.
School board member Curtis Millner of the Iriswood District cautioned that the school system’s budget must be balanced.
“We cannot end the year with a deficit, and the public needs to know that,” he said, urging people to let the school district know if they have ideas about how to save money.
Officials have developed a three-tier approach to deal with budget cuts in fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011. Jackson hopes the district will be able to handle budget cuts in fiscal 2010 through tier one cuts (immediate cost-cutting measures — which have not been identified).
However, he said, tier two cuts also might be needed in fiscal 2010 if the General Assembly makes even more cuts than those proposed by Kaine. Those cuts are such things as eliminating underused or ineffective programs, delaying capital purchases, adjusting class sizes and reducing contracted services.
Third tier cuts would be staff reductions. There was no mention of the need to make those cuts in fiscal 2010 at Thursday night’s meeting.
But Jackson indicated that deeper cuts likely will be needed in fiscal 2011 than in fiscal 2010. A budget document that was presented at the board’s Jan. 7 meeting said that in fiscal 2011 job cuts are likely, salary increases are unlikely, ineffective and underused programs may be eliminated, and creative approaches will have to be used to minimize the impact on classrooms. |
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