Civics and You

Are you a secondary History teacher? Are you an elementary school teacher? Well, the State of Virginia has just the thing for you to do. Take a Civics class.

In a story reported on WVTF in Roanoke, elementary teachers and secondary History teachers in the commonwealth will be required by law to take a Civics course before they earn initial certification or recertification.


Details about implementation are sketchy. Stay tuned.

Approval

The Roanoke County School Board approved its 2010-2011 school budget Thursday evening.

Thanks to the 50/50 revenue(loss) sharing agreement with the county that saved the schools about 3.0 million, the state's generous VRS holiday extended to school divisions across the state which saved Roanoke County Schools about 4.5 million, and the voluntary retirement by almost 100 employees, the budget was doable without requiring personnel to be laid-off. The school system was even able to pay insurance premium increases and our VRS contribution.


While the fact that all employees who want to keep their jobs will have jobs next year bolsters us, there is little else to cheer in the budget. Drastic cuts do not come without cost. People need to understand that. The VRS holiday is a double-edged sword for the schools because the holiday is over next year, and the vacated funds will need to be repaid with 7.5% interest.

Over the course of the budget discussion, my one criticism is that there was too much sugar-coating of the cuts. For example, administrators who would review with the school board specific cuts and how they will be handled within the school program would frequently make statements about how the instructional program would not be negatively impacted. In some cases, they stated that the program would be more stream-lined or that the pupil/teacher ratio would be well within state guidelines. Yet, the reality is that when you lose another 52 positions (due to retirement) without replacing those employees on top of all the employees who left without being replaced last year, you really can't say that the instructional program won't be affected.


The reality, however, is that the instructional program may be affected in the future. You simply can't sugar-coat that and wish it was not true. When you eliminate as many positions as we have over these two budgets cycles, the program will suffer.

Overall however, the School Board, Dr. Lange, Penny Hodge, and the staff really worked together to solve the most challenging budget dilemma in anyone's memory. They deserve our thanks.

The Board of Supervisors will entertain the School Board's budget on April 13 at 3pm. They are expected to give their approval.

Later in the meeting, the Board was updated on the Formative Assessment program. They were told that the program was effective and well-received by teachers. I was wondering if teachers in the county share that assessment.

Rally For Education Video Compilation

Last weekend, the Roanoke Education Association held a Rally for Education at the Martin Luther King, Jr Bridge by the tracks. It was a glorious early spring day. Many Roanoke City teachers showed up as well a few of us from Roanoke County. Local politicians and civic leaders spoke out in favor of public school education.

Here are a few video clips from that event. Warning: videos were shot on an older generation Flip Camera paw-held by my tired trained bear. Hence some of the camera work is a bit shaky and out of focus. However, the sound is generally good. So sit back, close your eyes, and listen to the speakers talk to your heart.


Jeff Artis




Onzlee Ware




John Edwards

Early Word

Back from the School Board work session. In a nutshell...no layoffs. 91 positions will be eliminated through attrition. VRS and health insurance will continue to be funded- increases paid. The health insurance contingency fund will be used to meet those costs.

Without the County revenue (negative) match and without... the State VRS funding holiday, we would be in deep trouble. The VRS holiday will one day have to be paid back either locally or at a state level w/ 7.5% interest.

The budget for 2011-2012 looks very bleak right now looking into the future crystal ball.

More detail later after the VT/UConn game :)

The State of Things

The State of Things

Around this time of year, budget, budget, budget is all we hear! This budget season, however, is one for the ages. At the regular Roanoke County School Board meeting last Thursday, Real Virginians (a.k.a. school employees) like me were accused by one speaker in the public comment time of causing public hysteria over the budget. If I could have replied to the man, I would have told him, “GOOD! The public SHOULD be hysterical about the state budget.”

I’m going to break Rule # 2 in creating a readable blog entry. I’m going to write about many different items and ideas all in one piece. Hopefully, all the items are tied together by one binding theme, hysteria.

Let’s start nationally and work our way down.

The National Scene

President Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan revealed his revision to NCLB this past week. NEA had forged an excellent working relationship with Duncan and was looking forward to assisting him in crafting the new policy. Unfortunately, Duncan has taken the revision in a direction that concerns NEA and AFT. Read more about this at NEA Today.

http://tinyurl.com/yj38kma

The State Budget

As you no doubt have heard, the state legislators came to agreement on a balanced state biennial budget (2 year). This budget will cut public school education over 1 billion dollars over the two-year period. Governor Kaine introduced the budget in December and slated education to receive $800 million in cuts. The Senate then put forth amendments to the Kaine budget that would up the hit to education by $114 million. The House then came home with amendments that tacked on $683 over Kaine’s original budget. The final compromise budget goes $253 million above Kaine’s original $800 million in cuts according to Rob Jones of VEA.

The Media Reports on the Budget

Now, I’ve been following the budget reconciliation process, and I knew that the conferees were working off of Governor Kaine’s original budget. Both state chambers had amended Kaine’s budget, and they had to come to some sort of reconciliation. Common sense.

I was listening to WVTF on Monday morning and heard a capital news report. On that report, the reporter confidently declared that public schools would take a $253 million dollar cut. I spit out my coffee. Okay…I don’t drink coffee. I knew that the total hit to education was over ONE BILLION dollars. Later, I heard the news director at the same station repeat the same $253 million sum. I spit my coffee out again. Hearing that incorrect number twice made my mind start whirling. I wondered how many local media outlets were informing the public that public school education would only be cut $253 million? It turns out more than you would think.

So if you’re with me on this, here’s a quick look at some major media outlets and how they covered the education hit. All comparisons use VEA/Rob Jones previously cited figures as a basis.

Richmond Times http://tinyurl.com/ygl7hc9

They got it the closest to right. $253 on top of one billion from Governor Kaine. Kudo’s to that flagship publication.

Washington Post http://tinyurl.com/ykwogpt

You’ll need a free subscription to view the article. In it, they claim that public schools will lose $646 million. Now if they mean that’s the number for the first year of the biennium, then that might be close.

The Roanoke Times http://tinyurl.com/yd2q9u2

The Times is a little confusing. The reporter mentions the $253 million in cuts then says that, overall, education will receive $790 million less in funding than in 2008-2009. He attributes that fact to Rob Jones of VEA. Really? I’ll have to ask Rob about that.

WSLS http://tinyurl.com/yhmandt

Newschannel 10’s Jay Warren reported that public school education received a $253 million cut in funding. (Over $750 million short)

WDBJ http://tinyurl.com/ygjrusq

WDBJ confidently reported that public school education received a $253 million cut. (Over $750 million short)

WVTF $253 million…

So as you can see, the media seems to have a different opinion of what the facts are in this important matter. Thanks to the reporting of many local and state media outlets, the general public may now believe that public school education received $253 million in cuts out of the $4 billion that were carved out. So what’s so bad about that?

VRS Takes A Hit

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. VRS was permanently altered by this year’s General Assembly. The pact that state employees and the state have cultivated over the past 50 years has been radically altered. WSLS had a report on the changes.

On the positive side, most of the changes do not affect current employees (no mention of vesting in the system either). However, new hires will participate in what has now become a two-tiered retirement program, one tier for current employees, another for new hires from this point going forward, forever and ever.

Two changes will affect everyone:

1. The state will now allow localities to decide to mandate employees (I know...wordy…dramatic effect in a long article) pay anywhere from 0 to 5% of their annual salary as their share of their retirement account. Since the early 1980’s this portion was picked up by the locality. We were granted this perk in-lieu of raises. Again this is a local option. As of this writing, RCPS has not visited this topic in open sessions. Hopefully they won’t tread over this ground.

2. The general Assembly has now granted localities the option to opt out of the VRS Group Life insurance coverage for fiscal year 2012. This loophole affects local government employees, but not state employees. Read more about the VRS solution on the VEA DAILY REPORTS.

Roanoke County Budget

· There will be a budget work session (previously scheduled for March 16) this coming Monday at 6:30 in Room E of the school office building on Cove Road. Mrs Hodge, Assistant Superintendent of Budget and Finance, should have the updated state budget numbers to work with by then, and the school board will get down to figuring out exactly how much funding for our instructional program can be improved and salaries boosted this year. Of course, we are actually anticipating program and position cuts as well as salary freezes, etc, etc, etc.

· An interesting question was posed at the very end of last week’s budget session with the county supervisors. Jerry Canada asked if the county was in position to fulfill its part in the 50/50 revenue (loss) sharing agreement as had been practice in recent years. His answer was that if the final budget approved was close to the Senate budget, then the county would be able to fulfill its obligation. If, however, the budget came in closer to the House budget, then there would be problems meeting that obligation. The final state budget was higher than the Senate, but less than the House. Stay tuned.

When Virginia Tech’s men’s basketball team was denied admission to the NCAA Hoops tournament last year, Seth Greenberg, the coach, said that the selection committee must be “certifiably insane” for not selecting VT. That’s how I feel about the state of public school education funding. Read this editorial from Monday’s Roanoke Times.

Finally, I leave you with hope. On Saturday March 22 at Noon, educators from all across the area will attend a rally spearheaded by the Roanoke Education Association (REA). The rally begins at Noon at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge next to The Hotel Roanoke. Please make time to come out and show your support for public school education.

Thom Ryder

(Please forgive omissions and typos…I wrote this late at night)

VRS and You

Rob Jones at VEA Central is no doubt putting in long hours these days. He and his plucky team of intrepid Factors are working tirelessly to protect public school education in Virginia. We owe Rob and his team a gigantic debt of gratitude.

We lifted Rob's latest blog entry. VRS is in the news. I hope Rob doesn't mind. :)

The conferees were very close to agreement this morning (Saturday). The good news is that your efforts have paid off, and the House has moved substantially toward the Senate position in regard to PreK-12 funding. Both chambers reconvene at 5 p.m. Sunday to take up the budget conference report, but anything can happen.

As we await final action on the budget, I thought it a good time to review the final action of the General Assembly in regard to changes to the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) benefit structure. VEA’s extensive efforts to warn members of the proposals being considered and to educate members on retirement issues paid off. Our members lobbied effectively to prevent a shift away from a traditional pension to a personal risk account. And they lobbied to prevent degradation of the current benefit structure. We did not win on all accords, but we won more of the battles than we lost by a long shot.

The good news is that strong “grandfathering” language protects the benefits of current VRS members. Delegate Putney’s language in this regard was far superior to that of the Governor in the introduced budget. The changes only affect future hires. The bad news is that we are moving to a two-tiered system which will provide reduced retirement benefits to future hires (those hired after July 1, 2010 with no prior VRS service).

School boards will have the authority to require new hires to pay from 1 to 5 percent of their credible compensation toward their VRS account. Sparing current employees from this provision is a huge victory!

The current normal retirement age, 65, is changed for employees hired after July 1, 2010, to the date for retirement under Social Security (either 66 or 67 years).

Future hires will come under the “Rule of 90” to determine the early retirement date with unreduced benefits. Under the “Rule of 90,” experience and age must add up to 90 to qualify for an unreduced retirement benefit (example: 59 years of age with 31 years of experience, 59 + 31 = 90). The “Rule of 90” replaces the current 50 years with 30 years of experience threshold. Currently, the age/service eligibility is 50/30.

For new hires “average final compensation’ (AFC) will be the average salary for the 60 highest consecutive months of service. (Currently AFC is computed on the 36 highest consecutive months.)

New hires will purchase prior service credit at the “normal” retirement rate during the first year of service, and at the actuarial rate after that. The VRS Board of Trustees will set the “normal” rate. The window for current employees is three years and the current purchase rate is 5%.

Caps the Cost of Living Increase (COLA) for employees hired after July 1, 2010, at a maximum of 6 percent (recognizes the first two percent of inflation plus one-half of the next 8 percent). The current COLA recognizes the first three percent, plus one-half of each of the next 4 percent (5 percent cap). The change in the COLA moderates COLA increases in periods of low to moderate inflation, but allows for greater increases in periods of higher inflation.

The VRS multiplier stays at 1.7% for all employees. This is a major victory. There was an effort to reduce the multiplier for new hires to 1.65%.

We’ll have to see if there are amendments proposed in the veto session.

We could have done much worse. Your work paid off!

Robley Jones

The School Board and The Board of Supervisors

School Board and The Board of Supervisors

Joint Work Session 3/11/10

The Players

Supervisors

Butch Church-Chairman

Richard Flora

Ed Elswick

Mike Altizer (absent)

Charlotte Moore

School Board

Mike Stovall-Chairman

Drew Barrineau

David Wymer

Fuzzy Minnix

Jerry Canada

The meeting was a general discussion between the two boards and their staffs. The idea was to discuss budget issues and whatever else came up. The meeting was generally informal. For purposes of brevity, I’ll refer to the players by their last names.

Called to order at 5:05pm

Opening remarks from Stovall and Church:

“We’re all in for the same people, the children and families of Roanoke County”~Church

Budget

Penny Hodge and Diane Hyatt presented a synopsis of the current budget numbers from the school and county perspective. Much of this information is available on the RCPS Budget Blog and through the RCPS Board Docs. The key information was hashed out last night at the budget work session relating to schools:

• $9.2 million gap in House budget
• $7.2 million gap in Senate budget
• RCPS will base its budget on 14,200 students.

County:

• Not filling positions.
• Moving people around.
• County administrator Goodman stated that he believes that the county can weather the storm on their side of the budget without cutting positions.

• The county should be able to meet their revenue match agreement with the school is the Senate version of the state budget is adopted ($3.4 million); however, they would "have a difficult time" supporting their match if the House version is passed. ($4.1 million). The boards did not illuminate us on how they would deal with such a discrepancy.

The Future

Much general discussion, which I will not directly transcribe here, centered on what happens after the current budget process ends.

• All players suggested that they have the current budget process in control. They suggested that while they don’t know final numbers from the state, they are at the point where they have plans to deal with eventual realities in funding.

• However, all the players expressed concern about the future…the budget for 2011-2012. The upcoming budget will force schools to take an $8 million or so hit. However, the following budget is shaping up to be more of the same or worse. After absorbing a reduction of 150 teaching positions over in the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 budgets, Barrineau wondered out loud what happens on next year’s budget. Stovall noted that many people are contacting him and asking what they can do to support schools. He opined that “The future budget is big and huge and catastrophic.”

I want to transcribe notes I took during a particularly pivotal exchange between Richard Flora, Jerry Canada, and Butch Church and

Flora: We know where we stand for the 2010-2011 budget. What happens next year 2011-2012? The stimulus money will be gone. When times were good, and the schools were getting a lot of extra revenue the county used a lot of that revenue to build positions on the county side (police, firemen, etc). “We can’t abandon schools now…If you think you can cut education year after year and not affect the program…If people think you can cut education year after year, you must have your head in the sand.”

Canada: “If the revenue doesn’t stop bleeding, then next year jobs, buildings and positions will be cut.”

Church: “We’re not going to take a hike on education.” Wants to work immediately together on next year’s budget.

• The two boards agreed in principle that they would get to work immediately after the 2010-2011 budget is put to bed to begin work on the 2011-2012 budget.

• Canada and Barrineau are concerned that the state may come back in six months, like they did this school year, with revised revenue forecasts and strip financial support from our budget. The board members wanted to know if the supervisors would allow the school board to tap the school division’s capital reserve fund in the event of such an emergency rather than laying off people or cutting programs. While no binding decisions were made, three of the four supervisors expressed no problems with that use and indicated they would understand and support such a decision. Ed Elswick’s view was that if the schools know that this may be a problem later in the year, then the school board should cut the budget hard now. After all, “Tax-paying citizens are having to shell out a lot of money.”

Bent Mountain Summary

Essentially the school board’s position is that they are closing Bent Mountain Elementary; however, they want to retain ultimate control over the building. The thinking is that one day in better times, the school system may be able to reopen the school. The school board members and most of the supervisors seemed to feel (trying to not put words in their mouths) that they would be okay with Bent Mountain going over to county control for the purpose of use as a community center. Mr. Elswick, however, was promoting another plan that was somewhat unclear. On one hand, he spoke of a community center idea yet on the other he talked of a private organization running a school out of the building (Note: the Roanoke Times reported that the organization is a Christian church group looking to begin a private school) School Board members expressed concern about that idea. They asked the county lawyer for clarification on the matter, but he had no definitive opinion of the legality of that use.

Elswick’s initial argument is summarized and paraphrased here:

Citizens want to utilize the school. Want to enhance it and make it a valuable asset. There are no county facilities there. People pay taxes there like everyone else. Proposes using the building as a community and not ask the county for a dime. Would like to preserve the way of life on Bent Mtn. Keep it a school, community center, etc. It’s more a part of the people’s life than similar facilities in the urban areas. It shouldn’t sit idle. The people want title switched to the county…away from the schools. Wants a vote today.

Mr.Minnix chimed in on the argument at this point saying that he had no problem leasing it. No problem letting a school group have it at a nominal fee.

After allowing everyone to voice their concerns, a consensus seemed to emerge whereby it was decided that staff for the county will put forth a proposal for what the county would like to do with the property and present it to the school board. Debate it. Decide it. Do it at highest priority.

Closed at 6:25pm

Regular School Board Meeting

March 11, 2010

7pm

Many people were in attendance. Many wrestlers from Glenvar’s state championship team were there to be honored. Principals were presented with an award from Governor McDonnell.

Most of the people were there to speak on the fate of the county school’s Governor’s School commitment. As we reported from last night’s meeting, the school board had decided that they could continue support for the program one more year, especially after negotiating a 20% reduction in the cost of the 57 (might be 54..can’t remember for sure) student slots. Total cost of about $250,000. Before opening the public comment section of the meeting, Mr. Stovall announced the board’s intent to the public in the meeting. Each board member then took a turn to espouse his support for the Governor’s School program. However, each board member also stressed that more than likely, the issue would come up again next year. Several board members pleaded with the citizens to contact their legislators in Richmond to help secure future funding support.

Several citizens rose to speak. The first two were a couple. The husband opened by telling the board that he is “an executive at a Fortune 500 company in Roanoke.” He told the board that they need a comprehensive review of the budget. He pointed out several items that were in opposition to how industry handles budgets. He especially was concerned about discretionary funds at central and paying for employees health care benefits. He believes employees should be paying these increases out of their pocket. This man went on to say “Hysteria generated by the media and school employees…” over the budget and the cuts is inappropriate and should not be tolerated by the people. His wife later followed up by saying that the taxpayers made their voices heard during the last election and they elected to send representatives to Richmond to cut the budget. She ran out of time to complete her statement.

Several Governor’s School students then spoke and gave their planned speeches in favor of their school. Each student who spoke was rational and presented well-reasoned arguments.

As an aside and commentary, I wanted to share the public comments as a way to illustrate a point. Our students are civic-minded, concerned and constructive…and that is not a “histrionic” statement.

The only other action at the regular school board meeting was the approval of the new retirement offer from Personnel. The offer (50 years old w/ at least 10 years in the county gets you $12,500 or $2,500 for five years towards health insurance premium) was approved without discussion.

The Board quickly adjourned at 8:05 to rush home and watch the second half of the UNC/Georgia Tech ACC tournament basketball game.

thom ryder

Roanoke County School Budget Work Session LIVE

The Roanoke County School Board met with school administrative staff at the Roanoke County Schools office building on Wednesday night March 11 from 7pm to about 9:00. During that meeting, information was shared and direction was given on several points:

Executive Summary

· Discussed state and local revenue projections

· Highlighted the differences between the House of Delegates and the State Senate budget proposals and how they might impact our school division.

· Set up an Average Daily Membership (ADM) base for building the budget. The state pays based on the number of student days spent in the system.

· Discussed insurance premiums. Dental is up $300,000, Health insurance is up 4.1%; however it will be absorbed by the overfunded catastrophic insurance account (the same one from which our bonus came).

· Lengthy discussion on Governor’s School. Suggested that we will stay in the program next year assuming projected funds come through.

· Decided to maintain current laptops and extend their warranty. However, no new laptops will be purchased this year.

· If textbook money ($1.1 million) comes through from the state, the schools will focus on K-4 and 6-9 SS texts/materials.

· Encore Elementary Resource Scheduling Program was introduced. 8/12 day schedule was illustrated. Potential elimination of 2-3 PE teaching positions

· Secondary Scheduling was discussed. Through efficient scheduling, 22-23 teaching positions will be eliminated.

Several things were not discussed

· School Closings

· Elementary staff reductions

· VRS employee payments

· Salary

The school board will meet jointly with the county board of supervisors Thursday March 12 at 5pm and then have its regular meeting at 7pm. Additionally, the school board will hold another budget work session on Tuesday March 16 from 2-7pm It is anticipated that the school board will prioritize specific cuts at that Tuesday meeting. All meetings will be held at the county office building.

Agenda (With links to the County’s BoardDocs)

Note: We were not given access to official budget number documents that were discussed at this meeting. Hence, notes from the meeting were taken from comments made by the actual people speaking. Taking notes on the fly is a dangerous and delicate process. We wish we had a hard copy of the actual information, but we have been assured that the detailed budget lines will be available on the Board Document links embedded in this document as early as Thursday March 11. What follows is a collection of notes taken as the meeting progressed. Please excuse any typos and shorthand dictation. Every effort was made to be accurate.

2.01 Enrollment Projections - Mr. Allen Journell

ADM (Average Daily Membership) Projecting 14,200 in ADM…could be a low guess. Mr. Minnix, especially, was pushing for using the lowest estimate as a worst case scenario.

2.02 Sales Tax Projections - Mrs. Penny Hodge

Significant portion of budget. February collections of sales tax were better and in positive territory. However, that increase pales in comparison to what is potentially being cut by the state. Due to the state using a different methods of identifying the number of students in the district, we could lose $450,000. (We used to use the triennial census.*** We will now use Weldon/Cooper numbers). Next year we are looking at $13.8 million as opposed to $14.2 million.

*** Does that mean that I will no longer have to send out those school census forms and then spend the next three weeks asking for students to return them?

2.03 State Revenue Projections - Mrs. Penny Hodge

In House and State we are slated to lose about $10 million. Penny Hodge outlined the $2.5 million shell game. In the House of Delegates budget that is being considered, we would be expected to get then return 2.5 million back to the state.

· House of Delegates Budget Gap: $9.2 Million

· Senate of Virginia Budget Gap: $7.2 million

Fuzzy Minnix opined that the final budget version will most likely be more like the House version than the Senate version.

Pending decisions are based on our final enrollment figures.

In addition, we will lose the $830,000 from the technology grant with House plan, but will keep the grant with the Senate plan

Early intervention, At-risk initiative, VA Preschool are all lumped into the Lottery block grant money in the House version. This is dangerous because if lottery money is doled out only based on what money is available as opposed to what may be needed. It makes funding these programs riskier.

2.04 Federal and Other Revenue Projections - Mrs. Penny Hodge

Net increase of $27,000

2.05 County Transfer - Mrs. Diane Hyatt and Mrs. Penny Hodge

Diane Hyatt: Comments on the county side. County views that Roanoke County will have $238 thousand new monies based on Kaine’s initial budget. They don’t have interpreted numbers for the amended budgets yet. The county (other than schools) is looking at -$200,000-300,000 from the state.

It’s hard to comment further since the county doesn’t really have as solid information as the schools.

Schools have a positive $300,000+ and balanced against a negative $9.7 million.

Using the House numbers, after running numbers through the formula, the county would pass back about 4 million. If the Senate budget prevails, about 3.4 million comes back.

2.06 Standards of Quality and Scheduling Models - Dr. Carol Whitaker, Dr. Cecil Snead and Mrs. Rebecca Eastwood

Staff was encouraged to be creative with scheduling.

Personnel knows where the schools are in relation to SOQ staffing minimums. Specific staffing cuts were not discussed at this meeting.

ENCORE: Scheduling of resource teachers (Art, Music, PE, Library, Guidance???).

· 8 day schedule

· Music and PE twice per 8 days (45 min)

· Art 2 X per 12 days K-5 (45 min)

· Library 3x per 12 days (45 min)

· Benefits: No school day travel. Common planning. Works well w/ parallel block scheduling…other benefits weren’t viewable from the slide projected on the wall at the other end of the room.

· Bottom Line: This program will result in two to three fewer PE teachers.

· Student centered. Efficient way of scheduling

Jerry Canada: How many fewer positions will it require? Rebecca Eastwood did not answer that question due to the potential for retirees to enter into the formula.

Dr. Cecil Snead addressed Middle and Secondary staffing: Keep the 150/25per student max levels. With new staffing guidelines, everything is better and maintains 25/1 staffing levels and allows for remediation possibilities. He suggested that fewer teachers would be required, but…couldn’t really say how many…save perhaps 22-23 positions across the board? He seemed to suggest that by more efficiently scheduling, the position savings could be maximized.**

Jerry Canada said that we are moving away from a parallel block scheduling. William Byrd High was the high school experimenting with the system.

Fuzzy Minnix thanked the staff and teachers for making secondary education so strong.

Penny Hodge: House version nixes planning period funding for secondary teachers.

**Honestly, your note taker is simply an observer with no hard-copy information in hand. I can say that I am not clear about how secondary scheduling will work next year and how they realize the savings of 22-23 positions across the board.

2.07 Health and Dental Insurance - Mrs. Penny Hodge

Due to negotiation and how the county allocates the reserve, premium increases are slated to be 4.1% with the increase completely covered by the health insurance reserve. (3 yr contract variable based on claims). There will be no changes in the insurance program. The county side is investigating a wellness program… with the schools coming on board in future years.

Premium increase of $300,000 in Dental.

2.08 VRS and Life Insurance - Mrs. Penny Hodge

Big difference between the House and Senate versions.

Current rate paid is 13.1 %

House version has us saving 2.4 million but giving 1.7 back to the state.

Senate version has us keeping more of the savings.

Very confusing issue.

2.09 Laptop Program - Mrs. Penny Hodge and Dr. Cecil Snead

What to do about laptops?

Options:

1. Grades 10-12 take them home $126,000 ( extend warranty)

2. Grades 11-12 take them home $210,000 (warranty and carts for grade 10)

3. Grades 10-12 Take home w/ new computer 126,000 + 900-1300 per new laptop

4. Phase out (No cost)

Online testing is a concern. Looking at a Dell E5400 computer. This model is slightly cheaper than the E6400 ($950 per).

The board will pursue option #1. This will keep the laptop program on life-support with no giant reinvestment of funds. The $126,00 will cover adding another year of warranty to existing computers.

2.10 Requests for New Funds - Dr. Marty Misicko

Marty Misicko suggests a 9% increase in building costs (electricity, etc)

Penny Hodge noted that property insurance increase due to catastrophe claim (Fort Lewis)

Governor’s School fees drop $54,000 ($270,000 to $220,000) Keeping our current slots thanks to negotiations with the City of Roanoke. Jerry Canada states that we will fully find Gov school next year if money comes in as projected right now…The following year’s budget is another story regarding this program. The board discussed this at some length.

2.11 General Fund Budget Recap - Mrs. Penny Hodge

Shortfall of $9.3 in House or $7.2 in Senate.

School Board will have to get together and decide how to react to whatever is approved.

Meeting on Tuesday will be planning to deal with whatever budget gap…prioritize cuts.

Direction given on laptops and the lower enrollment number (14,200).

2.12 Other Fund Budgets - Mrs. Penny Hodge

Ancillary Funds:

1. School Nutrition: Food buying cooperative with regional systems cuts food costs by 2-3%. Outstanding people work there. Increase budget projection is about $90,000 next year.

2. Pepsi: Sales decreased

3. Land Purchase: None

4. Bus: No new buses this year

5. Text books: $1.1 million for next year available from state and other sources. House funding and match in place. Senate no funding in place. If funding comes: focus will be on K-4, 6-9 SS

6. Laptop Fees: and insurance reimbursement might be enough to cover the increase of $126,000 in laptops category.

7. Grants: $266,000 loss of grant money for next year.

8. Debt Fund: Increase of $2.6 million to pay debt load on the four elementary construction projects

Joint meeting with Supervisors Thursday (tomorrow) Next work session next Tuesday.

General Discussion At the End of the Meeting:

Jerry Canada asked Mrs. Hyatt, County Finance Director: Is there any scenario where the county won’t be able to meet its obligations in the county/schools revenue sharing agreement?

Hyatt: County feels like they can deal with the Senate budget, but if it goes beyond that (House) the county would have a problem meeting the agreement.

Canada: Does the county anticipate layoffs or salary reductions at the county?

Hyatt: No. Nor are they considering service cuts.

Mike Stovall: Thanked the budget team. Talked about transparency and how important that is. “We’re going to get through this.”

Jerry Canada: Asked Mrs. Hodge about Mrs. Hyatt’s comments about the county not being able to cover the House budget…

Penny Hodge suggested and agreed that the House version might cost schools about a million more than projected if the county can’t meet its obligation.