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