Are you having a hard time trying to grasp how large the proposed budget cuts are to public school education in Virginia? Are you getting a little angry. Watch this video from Support VA Schools.
Kaine Budget cut $1,200,000,000
McDonnell Suggests another $731,000,000 be cut as well.
$1,931,000,000 or More...
How many jobs is that? About 30,000 this year on top of the approximately 12,000 last year. If Norfolk and Southern laid-off that many people, politicians would be trumpeting job solutions.
On top of that, your VRS system is being changed. Thankfully, compassionate allowances are being made for vested members, but new VRS members (people who don't yet have five years contributing to the system), unfortunately and sadly, will have a less stable and weaker pension plan.
There is NOTHING good about this news, despite Governor McDonnell suggesting that localities will "... be innovative, ... be creative, and... find a way to manage better." If the Governor wanted localities to be creative, innovative, and manage better, he could have just asked instead of just axing.
Showing posts with label Governor Kaine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Governor Kaine. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Sunday, September 20, 2009
New Holes Cut in the Belt
“We will continue to identify and implement cost-saving measures and frugal spending as a means of focusing the available resources on classroom instruction.”
~Penny Hodge, Assistant Superintendent of Finance
Do those words resonate with you? If so, welcome to the 2009-2010 school year.
Schools all across the county have redoubled efforts to pinch every penny and to scrape every scrap of savings out of the local school budget. Most schools have instituted strict copying policies in order squeeze out any savings they can. Some schools have gone to copy number limits while other schools now require prior approval for each copy. Most schools have also halted discretionary spending for office supplies and professional activities. High schools are reallocating human assets at athletic games by stepping up the use of teachers and reducing the number of paid security officials. All of these and a myriad of other local school cost-saving measures are being implemented all across the county.
You no doubt already are experiencing the byproducts of last spring’s round of cuts. Teachers in middle school are now teaching an extra period thus increasing their workload and reducing their planning time. All schools are suffering from markedly increased class sizes. This is especially felt in the early grades. Numbers in some kindergarten classrooms have skyrocketed and class sizes in all grades are at levels not experienced in over thirty years.
While no doubt the cost-saving measures and personnel changes save the school division real money, they do impact the instructional program, profoundly. Quite simply, teachers are being required to do much more with much less.
As an association, we remain dedicated to advocating for our members at the local level. We will continue to be a strong presence at the School Board level while increasing our visibility at the county supervisor level. As always, you can take comfort that you have someone who has your back, our Uniserv Director, Pat Wood.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
...And It Begins
Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia officially released his proposed budget amendments today. The details on how his budget amendment proposal would impact our beloved county is still to be understood, but it's impossible to cut money out of a budget without there being an impact. Brace ourselves, we must. (I don't know why I just wrote in Yoda-talk.)
According to Rob Jones of VEA, there are supportable details found within the Governor's amendments. Tackling an announced $2.9 Billion deficit will not be easy. Rob passed along the following notes this afternoon.
No doubt many of you will want to know what can be done faced with the reality of the budget shortfall (could end up being larger than $2.9 Billion). I can almost say with complete certainty that the budget will be amended. What we must do is help direct the amendments in a positive direction for public school education.
On January 9, I plan to join our education coalition partners in Lynchburg at a state budget hearing. At that hearing, I will no doubt push for examination of different revenue generating plans that would soften the blow. Re-instituting the estate tax, along with the cigarette tax increase, is one idea that is being considered (tax on estates valued over $2 million).
Most importantly, we must fight hard and strong to keep any cuts that happen from becoming permanent. This is paramount! Any cuts made in the remainder of the biennial budget must remain temporary. Virginia is already ranked 37th in support for public schools in America. That dubious ranking would slide further if these cuts were to become permanent.
President Boitnott will present a petition at the budget hearing in Richmond on January 19 that all members, friends of members, relatives, parents, and citizens are invited to sign. The petition clearly speaks to the issues we care deeply about. Please sign this on-line petition and urge your colleagues, family and friends to sign on as well. Our battle is to prevent permanent cuts to education funding.
Penny Hodge, Assistant Superintendent of RCPS, is working on getting a clear picture of how the proposed amendments may affect Roanoke County. Right now, this early in the budget process, it's really too early to tell. However, brace ourselves, we must.
On a side note, I'm experimenting with a new service on this blog. I realized that from time to time, I want all of you to be able to see documents that relate directly to a specific topic. Meg Swecker, master of all things technology, pointed me to a site called, Drop.io. With Drop.io, I can upload all kinds of documents, sound, and pictures and have you access them at your leisure. You can view and download the files as you wish. So far, I've added all of the back-issues of the RCEA News from this year, Governor Kaine's press release from today, and a few other documents that will be related to future blog entries. You can test out the service by clicking on the link in this article for proposed budget amendments or you can visit the whole RCEADistrict4 site.
Thom Ryder
RCEA President
According to Rob Jones of VEA, there are supportable details found within the Governor's amendments. Tackling an announced $2.9 Billion deficit will not be easy. Rob passed along the following notes this afternoon.
He cut education less than any other area.
He looked at both sides of the ledger, and raised the cigarette tax, tweaked the land-preservation tax credit and eliminated the “dealer discount” (paid to merchants for collecting the sales tax) to reduce the harm to essential state programs.
We have grave concerns regarding the fact that:
He made $400 million of the cuts to education permanent cuts that will be with us even when the recession is over ($400 million in SOQ funding reductions partially offset by $60 million in loss mitigation for the 2009-2010 school year). The impact on next year is $340 million. The impact into the future is $400 million per year. This eliminates the state share of funding for 13,000 positions including custodians, finance officers, HR directors, assistant superintendents and central office personnel).
What we know about the cuts for the next school year?
$340 million SOQ cuts to support and administrative components of the formula
$78 million in teacher salary
$82.5 in school construction
Total = $500.5 million, or slightly over ½ billion
No doubt many of you will want to know what can be done faced with the reality of the budget shortfall (could end up being larger than $2.9 Billion). I can almost say with complete certainty that the budget will be amended. What we must do is help direct the amendments in a positive direction for public school education.
On January 9, I plan to join our education coalition partners in Lynchburg at a state budget hearing. At that hearing, I will no doubt push for examination of different revenue generating plans that would soften the blow. Re-instituting the estate tax, along with the cigarette tax increase, is one idea that is being considered (tax on estates valued over $2 million).
Most importantly, we must fight hard and strong to keep any cuts that happen from becoming permanent. This is paramount! Any cuts made in the remainder of the biennial budget must remain temporary. Virginia is already ranked 37th in support for public schools in America. That dubious ranking would slide further if these cuts were to become permanent.
President Boitnott will present a petition at the budget hearing in Richmond on January 19 that all members, friends of members, relatives, parents, and citizens are invited to sign. The petition clearly speaks to the issues we care deeply about. Please sign this on-line petition and urge your colleagues, family and friends to sign on as well. Our battle is to prevent permanent cuts to education funding.
Penny Hodge, Assistant Superintendent of RCPS, is working on getting a clear picture of how the proposed amendments may affect Roanoke County. Right now, this early in the budget process, it's really too early to tell. However, brace ourselves, we must.
On a side note, I'm experimenting with a new service on this blog. I realized that from time to time, I want all of you to be able to see documents that relate directly to a specific topic. Meg Swecker, master of all things technology, pointed me to a site called, Drop.io. With Drop.io, I can upload all kinds of documents, sound, and pictures and have you access them at your leisure. You can view and download the files as you wish. So far, I've added all of the back-issues of the RCEA News from this year, Governor Kaine's press release from today, and a few other documents that will be related to future blog entries. You can test out the service by clicking on the link in this article for proposed budget amendments or you can visit the whole RCEADistrict4 site.
Thom Ryder
RCEA President
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