York County Superintendent Eric Williams proposed a fiscal year 2015 operating budget of $128.5 million that asks the county to transfer $2.9 million more than it gave last year.
Williams recommends the school board approve his budget, which posted to the York County School Division website Feb. 12, that contains $53 million request from the county. The transfer would be a 5.8 percent increase from the county’s contribution last year.
The proposed budget shows a total of $7.5 million in new spending and $4.6 million in available funding to cover the new costs, which leaves Williams recommending the division ask for the county to cover the gap.
The largest two chunks of new expenditures are $1.9 million paid into the Virginia Retirement System and $2.9 million to increase employee pay. The remainder, a little more than $2.5 million, comprises staffing, instruction costs, technology and other operational spending.
York County Administrator James McReynolds said at a recent joint meeting between the county Board of Supervisors and the school board he did not anticipate increasing the real estate tax rate, much of which is used to fund the schools.
Last year, the school division was left with a $1.2 million budget gap after a last-minute move by supervisors to approve a lower tax rate increase than McReynolds proposed.
A top priority in the proposed budget shows an almost $3 million allocation to unfreeze the teacher pay scale, which has been frozen for the past five years, and restore an additional pay step to the 76.6 percent of York teachers who have been with the division for all five years.
A recent study by Evergreen Solutions Inc., an education consulting firm, showed the division’s teacher compensation ranked in the middle third among peer divisions with aspects of the pay scale falling into the lower third.
Evergreen proposed new pay scale that would increase teachers’ salaries by an average of $423 per pay step.
Though a state funding formula ranks the county as having plenty of money to fund schools, York County consistently spends less per student than its peer divisions and ranks in the top third when it comes to student performance on Standards of Learning exams.
The county and school division see the low expense per student and high performance in two different ways. When Williams presented the information at a joint meeting between the two boards, County Supervisor Thomas Shepperd said the dichotomy indicates a success.
“I’m trying to see the downside of what you’re saying,” Shepperd said.
Mark Medford, chairman of the school board, later said the division’s demonstrated cost effectiveness showed credibility when “we state that we need additional dollars to sustain and build on the excellence of our schools,” in a recent news release.
Williams’ proposed budget also shows $1.5 million in reductions next year. Reductions include $700,000 through employee turnover, $170,000 savings in electricity bills, $318,000 through reduced health insurance rates and $3,000 for the elimination of the Zweibrucken Exchange Program. The division also no longer has to pay $393,524 into the early retirement system as that debt is now paid off.
The budget also shows a total of $1.96 million into the Virginia Retirement System next year, and $1.8 million of that money has to do with paying the current rate that has increased over the last few years. In 2012, a state mandate said school divisions must shift 5 percent of the money paid into the state retirement system to employees and make raises to cover the amount the teachers paid into the system.
Next year, Williams expects to pay $1.8 million into the system for the current rate and an additional $226,000 to cover the cost of shifting another 1 percent to employees.
His proposed budget also shows:
- About $2.4 million to address rising student enrollment and state and federal requirements related to retirement and special education.
- The hiring of at least two more school counselors for middle and high schools, which would mean the division would have one school counselor for 301 students, still leaves the county at a worse ratio than recommended by the American School Counselor Association
- A restoration of $300,000 for textbooks, which will be used mostly for the replacement of elementary books. Textbooks are replaced in steps right now and it takes the division about 13 years to replace all textbooks when an optimal cycle for keeping up with state curriculum changes would be seven years.
- $765,000 is appropriated to network storage equipment. The amount does not change how often the school replaces computers.
Related Coverage:
