School Board Newsletter, February 11, 1998

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Subj: School Board Newsletter
Date: 98-02-11 14:39:02 EST
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: "School Issues List"@vt.edu

Dear Friends,

Since I am adding new people to my mailing list all the time, and especially now that I am SB chair, it is useful to remind those who receive this that this newsletter is not in any way an official publication of the School Board--it is simply the viewpoint of one member concerning some of the issues that come before us. That said, however, many people have found it a useful way of staying in touch with the current scene. (If you do not wish to receive these letters any longer, please let me know and I will remove your name from the mailing list immediately.)

1. Budget. We presented our proposed budget to the supervisors at their meeting on Monday. Since we were given 20 minutes, the presentation was necessarily sketchy. But the superintendent did an excellent job in that time highlighting many important things--including the fact that although we were asking for a $5.2 million increase in funding, that had been whittled down from a list of quite justified requests that had needed $8.9 million in new funds. The supervisors will have work sessions over the next few weeks--some devoted to the school budget, at which we will be able to answer their questions. The final public hearing on the total county budget, and on the tax rate necessary to support it, will be held on Thursday, March 19th at 7pm in Blacksburg Middle School. I urge you to make your concerns known at that hearing, or before that point. In this and future newsletters I will discuss some of the items in our budget request.

2. Salary. We have proposed a 5% compensation increase for employees. If this goes through, it would be distributed to each employee group, which would in turn distribute it through its salary scales as it saw fit. That means that not all employees get 5%, but it averages out to 5%.

In my last letter I explained our quandry concerning benefits for part-time employees. The needs for part-time employees have become more pressing as the economy improves, since it becomes easier for such employees to get better paying work elsewhere. This has hurt us most directly concerning bus drivers. Generally we have tried to treat drivers and classroom aides similarly, but the reality is that it is not so hard to get and hold onto aides as it is to get and hold onto drivers. In fact, our Transportation supervisor has been driving routes often because of the problem getting drivers. I described the problem of having to give (and pay for) benefits to all if you give them to some part-timers, but it might at least be possible to give larger pay adjustments to drivers. I think we may have to look at that, even though it is not preferrable. In trying to fix some problems, we can't be paralyzed by our inability to fix all problems at once.

The 5% increase in compensation over-all would cost $2.1 million. This is by far the largest chunck of proposed new spending. Our average teacher salaries ($31,251 in 96-97) are higher than those in Craig ($29,909) and Floyd ($30,211) counties, but lower than those in Giles ($32,812), Pulaski ($32,635), Radford ($35,311) and Roanoke ($37,578) counties. And our salary scales compare poorly to surrounding counties at both the early and middle levels of the scales. Our salary scale comares well at the top of the scale--but the top has not been getting much in the way of raises recently.

Most everyone agrees a very important factor in quality of education is the quality of teachers in the classrooms. While teachers are obviously not primarily motivated by salary, reasonable salaries are important for getting and keeping the quality teachers we need in this county. Some people have pointed out that the inflation rate is only about 2%--but that would be a useful guide only if salaries were already where they need to be. They aren't.

2. Debt service. As you know, the schools are in the midst of a building program. We are nearing completion on the (newly named) Auburn Elementary School, and we are close to starting grading on the land for a new high school in the Elliston area. These projects cost lots of money. We have been gratified that the supervisors have supported these projects so that they can move ahead. They are being paid for by loans from the state literary fund, which has reduced interest rates. The pay-back on these loans is known as debt service. We will have increased debt service of $426,293 next year. The supervisors have already committed themselves to this by accepting the loans. Unfortunately the payment for these loans appears as an item in our operating budget. This new debt service by itself is equivalent to about 2 cents increase in the tax rate.

The supervisors have chosen not to deal with the building project by having it go before the voters in the form of a bond issue. This is fine with us, since it relieves us of the huge responsibility of campaigning for the passage of a bond issue. But it also tends to obscure the fact that the loans will still have to be paid--and we hope paid in a way that does not take money away from the other great needs in the school system. No one wants to build new schools INSTEAD of increasing salary or lowering class size.

There has been discussion in the legislature this year about possibly having the state provide money to the localities for school buildings as long as it is matched at a certain rate by the localities. This would obviously be beneficial to us. In fact, the supervisors officially endorsed this idea at their last meeting. But it would be a very expensive proposition for the state to undertake, at a time at which Gilmore is scraping around for things to cut. It is still being debated.

3. Car Tax. Due to an article in the Roanoke Times recently about the elimination of the car tax and its impact on SW VA, some people have asked me to try to explain what is at stake here. As I understand it, it is this: Local governments in SW VA have tended to tax cars (personal property) at a fairly low rate, while those in NoVA have tended to do so at a fairly high rate. Furthermore, people in SW VA tend to own cars and trucks that are less expensive than those in NoVA. Now that the state is offering to pay (some portion of) people's car tax for them (or rebate it to them), that constitutes tax relief. NoVA will get fairly sizeable tax relief, we will get relatively less tax relief. But all of the relief will come from the state. So the relief will come from state money that might have been distributed in some other way. Car tax relief is a sort of distribution of state tax money that will go mainly to NoVA due to the fact that they had chosen to have high tax rates and expensive cars. We in a sense are being punished for having a relatively low tax rate. No one objects to NoVA choosing to tax themselves highly, but people do complain about the idea that the state should pay those high taxes for them. As I understand it, that is the equity problem that some legislators have been raising.

4. SB Retreat. The SB will have a retreat Friday evening (2/20) through Saturday (2/21) at the Patrick Henry Hotel in Roanoke. We will have an outside facilitator, Bena Kallick. We will be talking about goals that SB members have for the coming years, trying to sort through them, boil them down, and set priorities and strategies. Then we will talk about goals in two specific areas: Assessment (of students, in light of the SoL's; of the superintendent; of the SB; and possibly of teachers and administrators), and Academic Challenge. The meetings at the reatreat will be open to the public.

Though there are many more issues to talk about, I will stop here and opt for a few shorter newsletters instead of one or a couple of massive ones. Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

-Jim Klagge
School Board Chair
SB Representative, District F

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