The chair of the York County School Board has sent a message to the community saying if the Board of Supervisors cuts funding to the public schools, an additional $1.8 million or more may need to be cut from the schools’ budget.
Barbara Haywood’s letter, emailed Wednesday afternoon to community members subscribed to the division’s Edline notification system, came less than a day after supervisors indicated they were ready to reduce the amount of money the county sends to its public schools. The Board of Supervisors may vote on the budget at 6 p.m. today during a work session in the East Room of York Hall. There is no public comment period scheduled for the work session.
[stextbox id=”news-sidebar” caption=”Want to know more?” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″ bwidth=”0″]Click here for a slide presentation the school division prepared for its joint work session between the school board and board of supervisors.
Click here for a set of school division “budget basics,” including key budget factors for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and ends June 30, 2014.
Click here for a story about the governor’s proposal to fund an increase in school salaries, and how school officials say localities would foot most of that bill.
Click here for a guide to the county’s budgeting process, and click here for the county’s proposed annual budget.[/stextbox]
Supervisors had previously announced they would vote on the budget at their upcoming Tuesday meeting.
The school division, although it has an elected board, cannot assess taxes. The board relies on appropriations from the county, the state and federal governments to fund its budget. This year’s budget, adopted by the school board last month, requires $124.4 million, of which the county supervisors have been asked to pay $51.17 million, or about 41 percent.
During Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors work session, several supervisors questioned whether the school division had been thoughtful about its funding requests even as they agreed a 2 percent raise for all county employees was necessary after five years of no increases. Click here to read WYDaily’s story about that meeting.
Haywood wrote that even if the school board reduces expenditures related to the Virginia Retirement System (click here to read more about that) and adjusts employee health insurance programs or premiums, “other significant reductions” would need to be made. She offered examples of cutting classroom teachers and para-educators and noted that since July 1, 2009 the division has eliminated 124 permanent positions. Fourteen positions are set to be cut in the budget that begins July 1.
Haywood called on residents who have an opinion about the school division and/or county budget to provide input to members of the School Board and Board of Supervisors. Click here for a contact list for the School Board; click here for a contact list for supervisors.
Carol Bauer, president of the York Education Association, said she wants to see the supervisors support the budget proposal from County Administrator James McReynolds that asks for a 2.3-cent real estate tax increase, which translates to an additional $2.3 million for schools. The one-cent tax rate increase would cut that in about half, to about $1.2 million. Both proposals fall short of the $2.9 million of additional funding the schools requested after sequestration.
