Dr. Steven Walts has proposed massive cuts in the School Board budget to make up a shortfall of nearly $80 million dollars. Projects and building will also be delayed as will certain school bus routes. After school programs will also see the budget hatchet. 700 jobs could also be cut.
According to the Manassas News and Messenger, additional cuts considered are:
Walts is also proposing increasing parking fees for high school students, charging athletic participation fees at the middle and high school level and reducing Central office budgets by 10 percent. The elimination of bus routes means that all students being bussed to specialty schools out of their district would be eliminated. However, bus routes for Thomas Jefferson School for Science & Technology and both Pennington and Porter Traditional Schools would remain.
The net effect of the bus issue, according to budget presenter David Cline, would be to transition those 32 buses to handle the surge in the regular student population, which is expected to reach more than 78,000 students by next fall.
The budget cuts are going to run deep. Bus services for specialty programs will be cut. Parents would have to provide transportation. Parking fees will increase. Central office will get a 10% cut. Class sizes will increase. Retirement will be encouraged.
Finally the N & M has hinted at the freeze on re-calculating the Local Composite Index issue submitted by former Governor Kaine and apparently getting ready to get the nod by current Governor McDonnell. They have taken no position to day on NoVA schools being short-changed by millions. The county and both cities stand to lose millions of state dollars because the formula is not being re-calculated as it should be.
The budget takes into account an expected $20 million shortfall due to the proposed freezing of the composite index by former governor Tim Kaine. The index is a formula that determines the ability of localities to pay for education, and grants state funding based on that determination.
Prince William’s index dropped more than 4 percentage points, thanks in part to a huge decrease in property values and consequently, potentially less money for both the county and the schools. Approximately 57 percent of the general fund revenue from the county goes to the schools.
People who value education should be swamping the governor’s office with letters, calls and emails advising him to recalculate the formula to ensure the Northern Virginia schools do not get shortchanged as they surely will if things remain the same.
The Washington Post makes no bones about the LCI causing a quarter of the problem:
Officials attributed a quarter of the school system’s projected $80 million shortfall to a proposed freeze in the adjustment of a state funding formula that is intended to compensate school systems for enrollment growth and declining tax revenue. School Board members urged parents to contact their elected officials.
“The entire General Assembly needs to hear that this is not fair,” said board member Don Richardson (Gainesville).
In an unrelated topic, the PWC School Board has appointed Lisa Bell to serve as the Neabsco School Board member until a special election is held November, 2010.
Congratulations to Lisa Bell on her appointment to the Prince William County School Board. I have had the pleasure of speaking to her a number of times and believe she was the best choice!
Where do readers believe the first cuts should be made? This budget process is the worst I can remember.
There is no good place to cut I bet – some very hard choices will have to be made in these difficult economic times. Not good that they may have to slow down new construction/expansion of schools, given the population growth in some parts of the county. Other things mentioned don’t sound great either. It’s pretty hard to trim the budget of a school system that keeps getting more and more students. That LCI issue is just exacerbating these budget woes – so its a double whammy.
Over 3000 new students projected. How can anyone even think about building more houses?
I would consider something really drastic. I would extend the school day an hour and a half and not open on Fridays. Pay the teachers accordingly. You don’t have to open up buildings over 3 days or run busses. That saves 20% of the transportation costs right up front. That’s the first step. I would also raise taxes at the county level. The BOCS is far to chicken to do this however. They want to get re-elected in 2011.
I would also shave off some of Walts’ personal staff. He makes enough money to pick up a lot of the slack.
Ok – the schools are in the crosshairs of a large unfair LCI financial hit, the
market is “leap off a tall building” down today, the cute panda is gone
and Arlington County is advising its residents to be prepared to
“shelter in place for 3-5 days” due to the pending snow storm!!
Hope the ABC store isn’t too crowded.
Poor Richard, are you sure you aren’t the town crier? The end of the world is coming! The sky is falling! Actually, I think you are on to something.
The market really is into free fall…again. ‘Shelter in place’ just has an ugly ring to it. I need to figure out how to improvise a dog outhouse on my porch if things are going that far south. Dogs first!!!
This is no surprise – the schools passed on cuts last year using ARRA funds to tide them over. Was that a good decision or not? I think they need to look at more centralization in Administrative services. Duplication of services is expensive and usually results in several policies and practices.
The systems focus should be on the mission – education. I am a firm believer that by the time a 14/15 year old gets to benefit from a free education to the tune of $8k a pop (or whatever the current per pupil cost is) they should want to be there.
Vocational schools or programs need to be implemented here. Doesn’t mean kids that go to vocational school receive a lesser education, it usually means they should just do this part first.
Not everyone benefits from the same timeline. I’ve seen some real go getters that would greatly benefit from first bieng taught a decent skill to get a decent job to get themselves out of a lousy home situation then addressing education. Our system ignores reality and focuses on making everyone the same. We’re not.
I would extend the school day an hour and a half and not open on Fridays. Pay the teachers accordingly.
and what will you do with the lack of teachers wanting to work for even less pay? And, the bus drivers who get 20% less salary? I understand the situation, but you are making the employees take the brunt of the lack of funds. And what about day care on Fridays – that will cost me significant money.
Ok, again — two feet of heavy snow coming down Friday afternoon thru Sat.
and winds projected to reach 30 MPH — sounds like a blizzard .
Snow, alas, has become a real four letter word — especially for state and
local folks charged with keeping roads clear, but already working with
empty snow removal budgets. A plus, though, for snow truck drivers,
snow shovel makers, etc. (we aren’t well equipped to handle this much
stuff — contracters who put a blade on their pickup can clean 3-4 inches
well, but are stymied by anything over 6-7in. – that requires heavy equipment).
They need to repeal the 2.9% raise that school employees received last year. I believe that the raise was warranted but not wise. I wonder how many jobs that would save? Additionally the administration needs to be cut back, way back. I remember reading about a formula or ratio for non -teacher positions per student. I would like to know what that is and where we stack up state wide. Lastly we need to demand our fair share from the State. If we don’t get it, we should secede with the other NOVA counties and cities. Let the downstate folks survive without our contributions.
The City of Manassas and Fairfax are wise. They closed their schools already.
Pat, I don’t know. Everyone is going to have to take a hit. Their routes will be longer. Adjust some pay and cut out operation costs.
Clueless, I dont think that’s how it works. We can’t repeal a raise unless there is no money. I don’t know about the formula for non-teaching positions. Tell us more. Do you mean LCI?
In general, when it comes to budget cuts, everyone thinks their own piece of the pie is essential. There are some obvious things: charge out the ying yang for student parking, use textbooks another couple of years, cut back heat in the winter to 65 and tell kids to wear sweaters, put 35 kids in a class, the list goes on.
I am hearing that the cuts will not take place in teaching slots (good thing with enrollment going up), but in Central Office. I have also heard that office staff in the schools will be cut.
To MH, class sizes in western end middle schools are already over 35 in many core classes.
Prince William has closed code red also. Smart move.
What dummy in IT is webmaster of the pwcs.edu site? I find it disturbing that an ear-to-ear grinning Walts is pictured right next to the bleak budget news. Did anyone else find that asinine and totally inappropriate?
Hahaha … just noticed the dewy-eyed (ick) picture above is actually the one I’m talking about.
He does not look saddened by the news, for sure.
Why is it that people always seem to be so quick to complain about EVERYTHING, but never have the intellect, knowledge, and education to understand a community always reaps what it sows…The problem is and always will be overpopulation…too many people flocking from overseas into a community that has insufficient jobs of those newcomer skill categories to employ them all. As a result, markets and income shift lower, people make less income, with less income they pay less tax, less infrastructureexists to support the overpopulation, less funding is available to meet infrastructure costs and people who have steady jobs in the organizations have to meet a reality that funding sources they used to have no longer can support those same number of jobs at the salary level they were paid before.
There are only two corrections to this according to history, increase innovation and start new markets that can support increased population growth (slowly over time) or decrease income and standard of living to accomodate increase in population competing for a limited number of jobs. If neither of these is possible, in history, disease, warfare, famine and decrease in living conditions to basic subsistance level (farming), for those who live in the city or suburbs reduces population until the number of available jobs matches the number of people in the community.
If you don’t believe this (and many naive people do not),, then look at the cost of bluefin tuna as a case study.
See next comment….
The Japanese in their own form or urban naiviety, took a food source that used to be regarded as catfood and not worth the cost of horsemeat and turned it into an urban snobbery art form. Like coffee, tea, sugar and wine, the idea of “cultural taste” is developed from creating an artistic elite (sushi chefs), that determined the best taste for raw fish was fatty fish, with the belly fat of the bluefin tuna being the highest in fat content, therefore the best taste (Americans never eat Blue Fin tuna and I’ll explain why in a moment),
While tuna were plentiful, 100 million Japanese were able to eat as much as they wanted without driving the price higher than the price of horsemeat. As the population in Japan increased faster than the number of jobs in this emerging tuna industry, they offset declining numbers of Bluefin tuna (a depleting resource) with higher income, higher taxes and higher sales price. Keeping the industry viable required marketing that only Bluefuin tuna were suitable for sushi (We eat only yellowfin in America Sushi). Eventually the cost of Bluefin bellies wnet to 100.000 US dollars per fish (Do you understand this?). The increase meant that all Bluefish(80% of all sales) went only to Japan, and were caught around the world by fishing companies everywhere until the populations were completely depleted. As costs exceeeded the ability of the average Japanese businessman to afford, they only eat sushi twice per year (on Holidays), live off a lowewr standard of living because there are not as many tuna industry jobs in Japan , as the number of fishing jobs catching tuna around the world took those jobs from Japanese workers, by overpopulating the Japanese mainland with foreigners, and exporting tuna industry jobs to overseas workers paid less money, to bring in less tuna as the population of tuna declined (If Japanese only had tuna to eat they would eventually starve from faminem until the number of tuna in the world increased to a sustainable level (number of people who eat fish matched the nukmber of fish, and number of jobs based on those fish matched the population wanting those high paying tuna industry jobs (Japanese fishermen actualy get paid like other tradesmen who go to school to learn a trade).
So how does the JAPANESE community heal itself? Stop advertising that Tuna is a delicacy that demands high price, replace it with a sustainable food source (Tofu is a delicacy that commands high price in artistic based gourmet resturants), Shift the jobs to the TOFU industry that has high sustainable yield (innovation) and reduce the Japanese population (by education and voluntary birth control by those educated in having a better future for thier children, reduce the demand on school resources, deman higher quality students and higher quality teachersm remove gangs entirely from the youth mindset (by imprisoning all gang members and eradicating mafias), and showing the world that jobs and population stability go hand in hand so much that they strictly control and regulate foreign visitors, visas and citizenships.
Why can America not do that? Because we believe that uncontrolled population growth is good for our economy, and that importing foreign labor has no consequence (even as we see our standard of living decline drastically and watch the standard of living of Japan and China rise.
Our problmes are a result of the naiviety of a class of our citizens that believe that everyone is good and all growth is good and seperation of the majorities and minorities into good and bad classes of ethnicities demanding exactly equal pay for all jobs because we are all identically smart and educated competing classes (and not individuals with different levels of intelligence and ability) is the way to make the world more prosperous.
The Japanese and Chinese know this nirvana is not possible, they are simply reducing their populations to match their job innovations and each individuals ability.
The topic is about the nearly $80 million shortfall in Prince William County Schools. We have an open thread for other remarks.
If people who eat sushi ever studied it, they would also understand the largest tuna (Bluefin) have the highest concentration of mercury poisening, and the bellyfat has the highest concentration of mercury and other toxins pervading the worlds oceans. The USDA does jot regulate fish like chicken, pork and beef, but the NDH urges everyone to eat no more than 8 oz of fish (white, small limited fat fish) per month (about 5 thin 2inch slices of salmon or ahi tuna (yellowfin),
If evolution works the way it usually does, these people who advocate that overpopulation of the earth is a good thing, will always likely make less money than others, will die more often than others due to poor diet and less education, especially if they eat sushi or other non sustainable toxic foods, and not TOFU, will have children with more diseases that will die more often, will have shorter life spans, defective nervous systems whose deformed, broken DNA will pass down generations of damaged brains and nervous systems, and over time, will have less capable talented people capable of innovation and increasing standard of living for thier children and the children who follow them.
Nature does not reward lack of knowledge and ignorance with wealth and growing living standards forever…in fact it reduces population naturally until ability matches resources and population, always for over 60 million years it has done that…
MH, Who are you to detemine what is relevant about population, and resource availability to an 80 million shortfall in a school budget? All your comment does is limit discussion to only what you want people to say or hear. You can look only at the minutia and see shortsighted consequences or you can look at the broader variables and see the long term consequences. It depends on your ability to see the relationships beyond immediate and obvious factors…
Is the spam filter out of commission?
There is a Silence of the Lambs from our local state legislators on the
proposed freezing of the LCI in Richmond that will cost PWC and the
two cities over 25M in school funding. None of them are speaking out
in support of our communties and attempting to influence Gov. McDonnell
on this vital issue. Very strange.
I think it is just an matter of not being able to get blood from a turnip. This year and it’s budget constraints can not be fixed before budgets must be adopted this spring. We (PWC) made our bed and now we must lie in it. Creative financial management decisions were made and everyone in the school system knew that we would pay the price this year.
I hope that our citizens start taking a GOOD look at our elected officials and question their use of our taxpayer dollars and proffer promises. We have squandered opportunities to use our resources wisely because interest groups, and these are not just developers, have utilized their influence to develop projects that support their small group rather than the community as a whole. It is time to demand full disclosure and adequate public notice for EVERY project proposal in this county, not just those that are being sought by big development.
I am hopeful that our governor will make hard, but wise choices. I am willing to wait for a year as he looks at all possibilities. Rash decisions in many cases got us to this point so I appreciate the need to slow down and see the big picture.@Poor Richard
The “rash” decision is to suddenly freeze the public school funding
allocation formula that has been in place for fourty years – when, for
the first time in those four decades, it allows Northern Virginia to keep
a little more of its tax money at home. (NoVa gets only 25-40 cents
of value for each dollar it sends to Richmond).
This is an ongoing argument, but schools are only one part of the budget.
There are many area’s of school budgets that started out as luxury items that because they have been around for years are now “necessities.” Our problem is thinking that we can measure a quality education by how much it costs. Instead of whining, we should see how we can streamline our system, encourage creativity. People have got to get away from thinking that the state and federal governments are the answer to everything. PWC schools used all of it’s stimulus money last year, thus putting off the difficult choices. For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We need to deal with the problem now and think forward.
There is the immediate issue of Governor McDonnell apparently being on the
edge of freezing the state’s four decade old plan for funding schools just
as it might favor NoVa for once. Our schools and children are in dire need
of these resources this year.
There is the larger issue of public education cost value and impact that goes
back at least a 100 years. First, like any large, especially public, organization
it isn’t perfect and could be improved — military, post office, FAA – you name it.
Second, one great challenge is too many divergent groups attempting to
drive the bus – at one time. Slash the mandates and demand that the public
body – at the state of federal body that demands a mandate – fully fund it.
Micahel, it most certainly is my right and responsibility to determine what is posted on this blog. Final warning. Follow the guidelines.
Before we start talking about luxury items in education, it helps to look at the number of unfunded mandates each jurisdiction might have to abide by or face federal courts. I can’t think of much fru fru in education nowadays.
Poor Richard is right on the mark on this one and I agree with everything he says on LCI (especially since he says it so much better than I do.) I also think that some of our politicians don’t want to take on the new Republican governor.
@hoodwinked_by_pwcs
Hee hee…I agree, that picture is NOT appropriate for the topic. However, I must add that whenever I see a picture of him the old “gaydar” goes off. Anyone know for sure???