Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
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Martinsville, Virginia 24115
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| School budget plan: |
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Friday, April 27, 2007
By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer
Henry County teachers are proposed to receive pay hikes averaging 3.14 percent while administrators and classified employees are slated for 3 percent raises under a new county school system budget plan.
School officials had hoped to give teachers 5 percent raises using a portion of increased local funding requested from the county, according to school Superintendent Sharon Dodson.
However, after the county funded only $469,813 of the nearly $2.2 million increase the school board had sought for the 2007-08 budget, administrators were forced to adjust spending.
Ridgeway District School Board member Mary Martin has proposed freezing administrators’ salaries to fund 5 percent increases for teachers, Dodson said, a proposal she calls “troublesome.”
That is because those salaries already lag the state average among school divisions responding to a survey for the Virginia School Board Association.
Of 118 school divisions responding to the survey, the pay of school administrators in Henry County ranks among the lowest, Dodson said. For example, elementary school principals in Henry County rank 108th. The same job in Martinsville ranks 33rd, she said.
“There are only about 10 school systems whose administrators’ pay is less than ours,” Dodson said.
A failure to increase those salaries would lead to even more disparity, she said.
The salary adjustment was a significant piece of trimming the budget, as was delaying the purchase of diesel school buses to replace gasoline-engine models.
While significant, those recommended adjustments “will allow the board to continue to fund safety -related projects at the high schools and middle schools and to progress on critical building improvements,” Dodson wrote in a narrative outlining the adjustments.
Several other categories were trimmed, among them: Instruction (reduced by $1,087,000); administration/attendance and health ($147,018 reduction); transportation ($289,054 reduction); and operation and maintenance (reduced by $145,648).
Only three categories in the school budget remain unchanged: debt service/transfers ($2,373,600), federal/state grant programs ($9,500,000), and contingency reserves ($100).
The school board can vary from these administrative recommendations when it meets May 3 to adopt its budget, Dodson said. However, if it makes changes, it must go back before the supervisors to get approval to transfer the funds between categories.
Board chairman Curtis Millner said projects designed to increase safety and/or security will be among the last to lose funding, considering the recent killings at Virginia Tech.
“I would propose looking seriously at any opportunity to shift funds” from one category to another, as long as it does not affect education, security or renovations, he said.
When county officials cut the school’s budget request, Millner was in Williamsburg attending a School Law Conference.
He said he is not protesting the county’s funding decision but wants local residents to be aware “of the prevailing opinion throughout the state” regarding education.
Citing the 2006 Commonwealth Education Poll, Millner said 65 percent of those surveyed gave high marks to public schools for providing either an excellent/good education.
Also, 63 percent of those polled said current funding levels are not high enough to meet schools’ needs, Millner said.
Fifty-six percent said they are willing to pay higher taxes to increase school funding, he said.
“I’m just saying that’s what the survey says,” Millner said, not that local residents are willing to pay higher taxes to increase funding to education.
The poll surveyed 807 adults between Dec. 4 and 23 for the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute by the Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Public Policy/Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory. |
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