Even though Easter has past, I still hear the echoes of Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! resonating across Prince William County. No, that isn’t the sound of baby chicks. It’s the sound made by the Board of County Supervisors.
Note a few facts:
Per Classroom indicators show that Prince William County has the highest teacher:student ratio in the DC metro area:
Upon further inspection, we see that Prince William county also spends very little per student compared to many of its neighboring jurisdictions.
What can be done? The Prince William Board of County Supervisors need to either raise taxes enough to fix this problem at the Revenue Agreement of 56.75% or….novel idea, increase the share of the Revenue Agreement. There really is no excuse for not doing so. Attracting well-paying jobs to Prince William County depends on having a top notch school system. With these statistics, PWC Schools are just running a shoddy second place. Who to blame? The BOCS, who always are going on the Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!
I have heard rumblings of Supervisors wanting to provide “oversight” to the school board budget. Sorry charlie, the state of Virginia says that the jurisdictions are to raise the revenueand the SCHOOL BOARD is to allocate all the funds. The different job descriptions of each governing group are clear. Most supervisors simply don’t know enough about school budgeting to do much of anything other than voice an opinion. The BOCS needs to do its job and not attempt to take on the job of the School Board.
So back to the solutions. The BOCS needed to have raised the tax rate enough to fix the problem of classroom over-crowding. It would have been a nice touch to have given the teachers a step increase also but who’s counting. They didn’t. they played Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! so they must increase the percent of revenue that goes to the schools. Prince William county students deserve to be somewhere other than the bottom of every statistic in the metro area. Our “baby chicks” deserve better!
It’s just embarrasing. Investment demonstrates priority. Period.
The FY 2013 plot of spending by county is simply amazing. I would never have guessed that Manassas and Manassas Park spend more per pupil than PWC. Do you have a similar plot of student performance on standardized tests by county? It would be interesting to see how much (if any) student performance lags the other counties that spend more.
Here is a link to the WABE Guide that probably has a comparison of test scores.
http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/wabe/2013.pdf
@Kelly
So where are the conservatives to whine about how much they pay in taxes and how much PWC residents (other than immigrants) are suffering because of the heavy tax burden?
@kelly_3406
Manassas Park does very well on SOL. I have never figured out why either.
Hopefully we would look at success other than through the SOL scores.
I will see if I cant find those scores later today.
Eventually the cheapness will catch up.
Cheapskates. Our public schools were once the best in the country.
In fact, Stonewall Jackson High School was named the best high school in the country a little over a decade ago.
Some budget facts
PWCS Spends $10,163 per student, Fairfax County spends $13,546.
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Total state and county budget contributions are now at the same levels as 2007.
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Since 2007, costs have risen substantially and student
populations are up more than 10,000.
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It costs $7 million to provide a 1% across-the-board raise. The School Board identified pay increases as a priority.
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It costs $15 million to lower class sizes by 1 student per class Divisionwide
it’s happening PWC is becoming the PG of Virginia. So where are PG and Montgomery Counties putting their $? Remember now, PWC ‘s average tax is THE lowest in N Virginia. And the county has the lowest number of employee’s per thousand residents.
Cheep, cheep is right. At some point lowest is not so good – it’s not enough.
Manassas Park does very well not only in SOL, but where tops in the nation for SAT & ACT, have a high graduation rate, and a high rate (think last year it was over 85% of the 480-odd graduates) who go on to 2-year or 4-year colleges. There are a couple of drivers as to why they do so well:
1. The City Government knows having quality schools is what will attract residents to want to live in MP, so some serious, intentional investment in the quality of their schools.
2. They have a City Council Appointed School Board. Yup, none of the “they are an elected body” excuse like in other local governments clogging up trying to get things done. If the Board Member is not working, they are replaced by vote of the Council.
3. The School Budget is a real budget and the City Manager & Superintendent work close together on it. The Council and School Board also work close. And no whining over things – as an example, two years ago the City Manager came out and said if they take one cent of every RE tax dollar, they can apply it toward Debt Service (and as was in the news then, MP had a lot of debt!). This would have meant about a loss of 1/2million bucks to the Schools who said “we can work with that”. And even with the cut, still produced great students!
MP is intentional in what they do over there….plus having an appointed School Board cuts out a lot of the monkey shins that goes on.
Ray, that might explain why MP is more efficient although I am not ready to sing the praises of appointed school boards….I remember back that far, being a vintage woman. IN fact, we haven’t had elected school boards even 20 years I don’t think.
However, that doesn’t explain the really good test scores that have come out of MP. After having 5 million different superintendants, they finally got one who stuck around and was very invested in the system.
No, there is something more that money can’t buy. No one in the surrounding educational field has figured out exactly what they do differently. I think it is the same reason their marching band radiates a pride you don’t see in other area bands. Someone has told those kids they are going to amount to something and has put the time and energy into guiding them.
Whatever produces results isn’t just about money and class size. its some special touch that interfaces with kids.
I thought for a while they expelled all their deadbeats.
Seriously….look at the demomographics. It makes no sense.
Changing channels here…why do you like appointed school boards? I do not.
The average cost per pupil number in PWCS is where it is in large part because of two factors (1) the number of new or newer teachers in PWCS who receive the lowest average starting salaries in the region and (2) the extremely large class sizes in PWCS.
For the past several years PWCS has been the fastest growing school division in the state and region by a significant margin and the school division has been recruiting new teachers as fast as possible. Other school divisions, like Arlington and Alexandria, are generally only recruiting new teachers as more experienced teachers retire or move away. Since the starting salary for teachers in PWCS is the lowest in the area, the net effect is that PWCS has a less experienced teacher work force which is paid less than the more experienced work force in Arlington or Alexandria, and that brings out cost per pupil down.
The other major part that pulls our cost per pupil down is our class sizes – and it’s not just classroom teachers that are at the legal maximum. PWCS has the largest class sizes in the state and the region and also has the most students per speech therapist, ESOL teacher, guidance counselor, SPED teacher, you name it. We’ve taken everything the school division does and maxed out the number of students per instructional resource.
PWCS needs to fix teacher compensation.
We’ve got the lowest starting salaries and nearly the highest maximum salaries in the region, and we’re recruiting new teachers faster than any other division. PWCS needs to raise the starting salaries for new teachers to at least the regional average or slightly higher. That way we’ll be recruiting the best and brightest new graduates.
We need to give our teachers a step increase or an across the board % increase to make up for the increased cost of benefits and living. We also need to fully fund the tuition assistance budget. PWCS requires teachers to take masters level courses but only budgeted enough to provide 9 weeks of tuition assistance at $700 a pop.
I have never known PWC to require teachers to take masters level courses at their own expense. Please provide documentation. it must be something very new if indeed they are doing that.
I would also beg to differ that the maximum salaries for teachers are the highest in the region. For example, Fairfax can dance circles around those with the most experience. Furthermore, freezing step increases sort of curtails anyone ever raching maximum salary.
I don’t argue that attractive starting pay is always good but not at the expense of those who are at mid-grade and top salaries. It is just as important to retain your staff as it is to attract new staff. I have known many folks who left to surrounding areas to make more money.
As for reducing class sizes – it is soooo past needed and developing a plan shouldn’t be contingent on getting new revenue. The school board, based on input from classroom teachers, needs to set a cap for every individual class – maybe something like 25 students per class for K – 5 and 30 students per class for 6 – 12 – and they need to commit to providing full time aides in all kindergarten AND 1st grade classrooms.
Then they need to figure out which classes at which schools exceed the cap they’ve set and develop a multi-year plan for bringing class sizes down which includes providing aides for schools that are so overcapacity they don’t have the room to add any more classes.
The county needs to stop rubber stamping new developments. That would be the first thing to do to reduce class size. This has been an on-going problem for over 50 years. The supervisors have never seen a subdivision that they didn’t like. The school system therefore is always running to play catch up.
Aides don’t do d*** for reducing class size. They are useful but they don’t reduce class size. 30 kids is too large for any classroom and this over-crowding is not a new problem. It’s an on-going and pervasive problem that has long been ignored in this county.
The county has always has over crowding. Who remembers year round school? That wasn’t started because they were innovative. They had more kids than schools. (eastern end) Now they resist bringing in trailers, finally cave, and then the parents gripe. Then they all go out en mass and petition the BOCS to fubber stamp yet another development so they can get more athletic fields. Its like watching lemmings dive into the sea.
The only way now to reduce class size is to provide new money to reduce class size. It is needed to hire more teachers. More teachers = reduced class size.
By the way, PWC schools are always low end on the per pupil spending and it really has very little to do with low starting pay. I cry bullshit on that one. Its becausae the county is cheap. I have earned the right to say so. Trust me on that one.
Sorry for the multiple comments. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be an I have trouble reading long posts, so I posted lots of shorter ones.
Thank you so much for this document http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/wabe/2013.pdf
I went to the fcps.edu site and tried to find this document by browsing the website and I cannot. This document can only be found if you know where to look. I would never have seen this had you not pointed it out.
@Moon-howler
Its regulation 581.02-1.
Under that regulation Teachers will be reimbursed for the cost of undergraduate classes only if those classes are necessary to maintain their certificate or to teach a non-core state mandated course. Otherwise the course must be graduate level from an accredited college or university. The amount reimbursed is contingent on the availability of funds, which means when the budget for tuition assistance runs out, you get nothing.
The tuition assistance budget has been one of the targets these past several years and the net effect is that they ran out of money in the budget for tuition assistance in 9 weeks this year. The Brenstville and Gainesville District budget committees wanted to boost that budget back to 2012 levels, which would have been almost 4 times the amount proposed in the FY 2014 budget, but there was no support for doing that (and that boost would only have been a few hundred grand).
The state of Virginia is making those rules regarding grad classes vs undergrad classes. As for reimbursement….this isn’t the first time running out of money for reimbursement has happened and I doubt if it will be the last. However, the county isn’t requiring that teachers take grad courses whicch was my only point.
Actually they often bring courses in and make them available to teachers. Complete the course, it costs you nothing. Of course, depending on the field of study, taking undergrad courses in content areas is often accceptable.
I am not opposed to boosting the budget in this area. I am opposed to blaming the wrong guy for the reg though. That reg is totally based on state certification requirements.
Aides don’t reduce class sizes, but they sure do help a teacher and cost a lot less than full time teachers. They may also be the only option available in schools that are so overcapacity that they can’t add any more trailers for classes or while we wait for the tens of millions of dollars to roll in when the school division hits the power ball jackpot to hire more teachers and add more trailers.
To get the money to hire more teachers and install more trailers PWCS needs to convince the BOCS of how desperate the need is. So many of our BOCS members are clueless about education and have no idea how overcrowded classrooms are now as they don’t have kids or even grandkids in public school. That $15 million for one child in every school at every grade level is a great slogan that will convince no one because it’s too big and too non-specific.
To do the right thing PWCS needs to choose a cap for individual class sizes at each grade level and subject, based on what our teachers recommend and not what the folks at the Kelly center or administrators say. Then they need to figure out which schools have classes that exceed those caps, which may not be every school or every grade level.
Once they figure all of that out they need to develop plan for bringing every individual class down to the county cap that is phased over several years, is updated annually as enrollment changes, and has $$$ attached listing the number of new teachers and trailers needed. Then they can go to the BOCS and show them what they need additional money for.
Without a specific plan with numbers and impacts the BOCS can just sit back and say “do more with less” because all they’re turning away from is a vague bring class sizes down with a $15 million slogan attached that’s so large it feels like anything less than $50 million will be inconsequential.
In the meantime, while we wait the years it will take to implement the plan and actually bring class sizes down, classes that are really big can have an aide assigned to them, if the teacher wants one, to help the teacher manage the classroom.
We can’t wave a magic wand and fix the too large classes overnight. It’s just too much money to do all at once. Some of our high school and middle school classes have 36 – 40 students in them. They need relief now, not in 2018 when the next MS opens up. So we need interim solutions. If aides will help fill the gap while the bring class sizes down plan is implemented, then we need to use aides. We need to do whatever we can to help our students.
Unfortunately for my children, PWCS likes it’s $15 million slogan a lot better than putting the effort into developing an actual plan.
Not to be Captain Obvious but large class sizes aren’t exactly a new phenomena. I agree that one or two on the BOCS are clueless about the school system in general and that gettin g elected and filling the war chests plus political ambition rule the day. However, most of the BOCS and those who came before them haven’t grasped that all the new development in the county simply adds to the overcrowding woes. Any yes, there are other reasons for overcrowding other than new development. Those are just the parents who yell the loudest–the more affluent ones. How about those in the older schools who have parents that aren’t quite so affluent or perhaps they are immigrants? Those classes are often even more overcrowded. They just aren’t as visible. I can think of several schools on the western end of the county that have had a bazillion trailers as far back as I can remember. No one gave a rat’s ass either.
Here’s part of the nasty little problem, other than political ambition–the State of Virginia has a rather funny way of doing the per pupil ratio. They take every certificated person in the county and throw them into the mix. Your music teacher, PW teachers, visiting teachers, special ed testers, school psychologists, testing administraters, speech therapists et al all get added in and so it ends up looking like a per pupil ratio of 16:1. False sense of security. That doesn’t show that Mrs. Jones has 37 in her social studies class and Mr. French has 42 in beginning Spanish and poor Mr. English has 39 in freshman English. Mr. Latin lucked out. He only has 15 kids in 5th period Latin.
Its more evened out in elementary. If Mr. Johnson has 32 kids in 4th grade A class, you can bet its pretty much across the board. That is way too many kids. It also isn’t just about the kids either. In secondary schools, you have to keep furniture in there for them to sit in. If one class of advanced geometry has 21 students and regular geometry has 36 students, you still have those same desks taking up so damn much room you can’t walk around. Those are the things that those on the dais don’t understand because they aren’t there.
Those teachers with wonderful aides are lucky. Those with not so wonderful aides just have another body to contend with. As I said, this is not a new problem. This is a problem that is old and is growing increasingly worse.
The only thing that reduces class size is hiring more teachers. Classrooms can be made in trailers, closets, teachers can be put on carts, The important thing is enough teachers to go around. Teachers cost money. They don’t work for free.
As you well know, teacher compensation, to a large extent, is based on years of service. Per the WABE, salaries for our midpoint teachers are about average for the region (higher than Manassas, Manassas Park, Loudoun, and Fairfax and lower than Falls Church, Arlington, and Alexandria). Our maximum is among the highest in the region (higher than Fairfax, Loudoun, Manassas, and Falls Church). Our starting salary, on the other hand, is the lowest in the region.
Because we’re a growing county, the fastest in the state, and have been for years, we’ve been hiring lots of new or newer teachers. As a result, our average salary for teachers is lower than the regional averages. That’s due in large part to the high proportion of new or newer teachers we’ve hired.
The PWCS budget is high dependent on personnel, mostly salaries and benefits. That lower average teacher salary means our cost per pupil is lower as well. Not entirely, but a chunk of the difference is due to our lower than everyone else average salary.
Because we’re going to continue to grow and hire new or newer teachers and our students deserve the best and brightest new teachers who can command higher salaries, we need to raise the bottom. We need to bring those bottom bands up to at least the same as Fairfax and readjust the other bands as necessary. For our experienced teachers we need to restore steps and / or need to give additional across the board % or $ increases.
Just like class sizes, we didn’t get to this point on compensation overnight and fixing it won’t happen overnight either. Like so many things, we need a plan. Maybe across the board % or $ increases for experienced teachers comes first, with bringing the bottom up second, and restoring steps third. I don’t know. I know that in the past we’ve had a multi-year program in place to improve teacher compensation and believe we need to do that again.
The difference in teacher compensation is negligible. I am curious who sold you that bill of goods? Per pupil spending is low because the county is cheap and doesn’t spend as much on education. It never has. Check out the history of per pupil spending in the county over the past 50 or so years compared to surrounding localities.
I do believe somewhere in those mostest stats, Loudoun County beat out Prince Billy bob for the fastest growing. PWC was the fastest growing 45 years ago. Some day they are going to have to give up that title.
Do you seriously think Loudoun doesn’t hire new teachers? Fairfax? All school systems are heavily invested in personnel and benefits. Back to my premise–PWC doesn’t invest as much in per pupil spending. It has almost nothing to do with the per pupil.
As for the maximum salaries–how many people do you really think that affects?
The county needs to not only give teachers their step increase but make up the ones they have lost.
I would get over the WABE stats. It gives a snapshot, that’s all. It doesn’t tell the whole story–not even close. For starters, its pretty difficult to trust a publication that lists FICA as a benefit.
This isn’t my first trip to the rodeo.
If the difference is negligible then why does it matter that PWCS pays their teachers the lowest in the region?
Why on earth would any new teacher want to work in PWCS? We’ve got huge classes and the lowest starting salaries around. Why not go for Fairfax first and then Loudoun, assuming you don’t want to work in Arlington or Alexandria? If we want to compete with Fairfax and Loudoun to recruit the top tier new teachers, we need to pay our new teachers enough to make it worth their while. Then we need to pay them enough to keep them here.
No one sold me any bill of goods. I did the math. If we bring up our teacher compensation we will bring up our cost per pupil. That’s basic logic in a school division where 78% of the costs are personnel related.
In case you didn’t figure it out – I agree with you on teacher compensation. We need to give our teachers raises. My only point was that if we bring up teacher compensation we will also bring up our per pupil charges. Like I said, it won’t be the whole cost, but it will be a chunk of it.
Another chuck of it is central office. PWCS runs a very lean central office, particularly when compared with surrounding school divisions like Arlington. While I think PWCS needs more teachers and classrooms and central office will have to increase to support that, I’d prefer we not increase central office to reflect the levels in surrounding jurisdictions.
PWCS has been adding students and hiring teachers at a faster rate than Fairfax and Loudoun. We used to be almost neck and neck in terms of size with Loudoun, not so much anymore and Fairfax is so much larger than us that their growth is barely a ripple in their school system. Nearly 1/3 of all student growth in the state a couple of years ago was in PWCS.
I never said that Fairfax and Loudoun don’t hire new teachers.
Because PWCS has been growing so much faster, PWCS has been hiring more new teachers than other divisions in the area as a proportion of our teacher population. Because those new teachers make up such a large proportion of our population of teachers and are paid less than teachers with 15 – 20 years of experience, our average teacher’s salary is lower than those in the surrounding area.
Our greatest investment should be in our teachers and or students – before we do anything else we should bring class sizes down and pay teachers more.
For all it is and is not, the WABE provides a basis for comparing PWCS to school divisions in our area and its numbers are calculated with the same formulas and standard definitions. That means we can look at PWCS and see that our teacher salaries aren’t keeping up with regional norms or that our class sizes are exponentially larger than every other school division in the area. While teachers and parents could provide that same information from their own experiences, having the numbers there to point to makes a difference and boosts the argument that we need to spend more.
Not that its relevant, but FICA is a benefit because it is something you’ll get back after you retire (or your children will if you pass away when they’re under 18). It costs the school division an addition 6.5% for FICA taxes for every full time employee and those numbers add up. It may be uniform across the nation, but it’s still a cost of employing people.
Benefits, to most human beings, are things you get that your employer doesn’t have to give you. I would like to see any school system refuse to pay FICA on anyone.
A cost of employing people is not necessarily a benefit.
I would take another look at that formula you are using to calculate the per pupil spending.
I have never said teacher pay doesn’t matter. I said it was bogus to use that as a reason for low per pupil spending.
You obviously know more about everything Prince William than anyone else, including Johns and Walts, or at least have a few people convinced that you do. I simply am not one of those people.
Here is the reality and Moon follows up this thread with the crux of the problem. This county is always playing catch up. All the numbers and stats and blah blah blah simply create confusion about how to solve the problem. DON’T support developments like Avendale or Stonehaven. PERIOD! Multiply new high density housing with no concurrent infrastructure plan and you have our current condumdrum. It is the BOCS that has created this problem and that they bitch and moan AT the School System is the biggest insult ever.
I am sure there are many school personel working on this very problem. Certainly TEACHERS don’t want to be in overcrowded classrooms. Wally Covington proposed a mortorium on any new developments a few years back, everyone thought he was such a good guy. He did a bate and switch, it was such a joke and people actually bought it, what fools. If it were easy to solve the problem of over crowded classrooms it would have been done.
We do need to spend more. That shouldn’t be up for debate, it seems apparent to me. I have a novel idea, stop wasting all this money on testing kids to death and invest in real life experiential learing opportunities while reducing class sizes and raising teacher pay.
Instead of bitching at the school board, show up or write about developments like Avendale and Stonehave and THEN you will see an impact on our school system!
USA today2/17/11
More than half the growth came from Northern Virginia.
Fairfax County (pop. 1.08 million) and Prince William County (pop. 402,000), suburbs of the nation’s capital, remained the state’s two largest counties. Their populations grew 11.5% and 43.2%, respectively, from 2000 to 2010. Loudoun County, a more distant suburb that was the fastest-growing Virginia county, grew 84.1% to 312,311.
Not to be an insufferable know- it-all, but Loudoun County surpassed Prince William County as “the fastest gowing” a while ago.
Maybe PWC has taken back over the lead. Who knows. All the answers aren’t in the WABE though.
That is not to say that Prince William county isn’t still growing and growing fast….
Did I leave out that PWC doesn’t just hire first year teachers to fill positions. Because of site based management, all salaries are X, not x + years of experience.
Just out of curiosity, what math formula did you use to arrive at your ‘facts?’
It seems to me that you have taken an incomplete set of data and done some fancy manipulating.
“Instead of bitching at the school board, show up or write about developments like Avendale and Stonehave and THEN you will see an impact on our school system!”
Right on Elena!
Just to clarify, I totally support giving both a raise and step increase to PWCS employees. All raises are across the board.
I support reducing class size and have done so as long as this blog has existed.
What I am not going to remain quiet on is trying to blame the low per pupil spending on teacher pay. That creates a very false cause/effect that has been built on truncated data. It just isn’t there regardless of how much blather is thrown.
As I have said, this isn’t my first rodeo.
Additionally, the change in the revenue sharing agreement should have been discussed BEFORE that tax rate was set for advertisement. It cannot be changed now. Is it right to short out other county services at this late date? Probably not.
I don’t blame Pete Candland. There is an order to these kinds of things and it sounds like the county is once again chasing its tail. It seems to me that the RSA % should have been worked out, Then the advertised tax rate set rather than vice versa.
@Anon
Mrs. Caddigan said it as nicely as she could. We can’t keep putting in housing developments and then wonder why we need new schools.
No developer has ever proffered a school or paid for the additional teachers.
The parents who keep being fooled by this ploy need to talk to Elena. I challenge some of these youth sports groups to invite Elena to speak to their association. Learn how they are being used and learn how their kids are being used.
Is anyone up for the challenge?
I read most of this thread. Good points. I wanted to give a few numbers that are very real to me. There are 36 students in my son’s 8th grade algebra class and his language arts class, these are his smallest class. There were 42 in his spanish class, but I think it is now down to 40. His teachers are amazing. I am not sure how much one teacher can take but I hope they hang in there and I hope someone has a plan. There really needs to be a plan.
Tac, thanks for sharing those numbers.
It looks like those numbers are now the rule rather than the exception.
I hope more parents will come and post the numbers. That tax rate was set way too low when advertised.
And I hope every parent who complains about 35-40 students in their children’s classes will swear an oath NOT to write the supervisors an email supporting Stonehaven because they want more sports fields. I hope very parent who complains about 35-40 students in their children’s lass rooms will also swear an oath to email or speak at the BOSC meeting against Stonehaven.
Those two things are two things parents can do to bring down class size. Stonehaven will bring 1300 students into our system. Think classrooms are overcrowded now? Try cramming in 1300 more.
They won’t even be able to dilute them across the county, Anon/
I have no comment on any of the above except this: Lowest starting pay? Is that just in NOVA or the state, because many counties have lower starting pay. Richmond starts at 40K. Henrico 41+.
@TAC
THAT is A LOT of children. Whew.
Lowest NOVA starting pay. I am not really sure it is. I guess that all depends on what is considered NOrthern Virginia.