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School board approves budget
After more than two hours of deliberation, the Fairfax County School Board approved its $2.2 billion budget for the 2008-09 school year.
Contending with a multi-million dollar shortfall, it was the smallest budget increase for the school system in 15 years.
Teachers, staff and students are all affected by the new budget, which will be implemented July 1.
The annual cost of living adjustment for FCPS staff was reduced from 3 percent to 2 percent, saving the system $17.5 million. Salaries for county schools staff will fall farther behind Montgomery County, which, for a second year in a row, offered a 5-percent increase to staff.
Next year, first-year teachers in Montgomery County will receive $46,410, while Fairfax teachers will receive $44,789.
Manassas City Public Schools offers the highest cost of living increase for teachers in the region, giving a 6-percent annual increase on average.
General education class sizes will increase by 0.5 students, saving $11 million and cutting 158 teaching positions. A third of all county instructional assistants, 58 employees, will also be cut, saving $1.8 million.
Superintendent Jack Dale's central office budget was slashed 5 percent and, in a last-ditch effort to ease the financial burden on employees receiving less than $12.75 an hour, the school board narrowly passed a measure granting those employees a one-time $500 stipend. Amounting to $0.8 million, the money will also be taken from the central office budget.
Last month the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors gave the school system $40 million more than last year's budget, instead of the $63.7 million in additional funding the board asked for.
Due to higher fuel costs and other expenses, the smaller increase amounted to a budget cut.
Dale originally proposed a $55 million budget increase, but the school board thought additional money was needed to mitigate the impact of more than 3,000 incoming students next year and help fund the expansion of full-day kindergarten care and other programs.
"Every single member on the board regrets that we cannot do more for our employees," said Braddock District School Board member Tessie Wilson. "I think every single one of us wishes this budget was different than it is, but we have to deal with the hand we've been dealt."
One silver lining for teachers is that the school year will be shortened by two days, with schools closing on June 13 instead of June 17, time teachers can use to finish last-minute grading, paperwork and training.
Leonard Bumbaca, president of the Fairfax Education Association sat in the empty auditorium as the board approved the budget. He noted that none of the school board members proposed any amendments to protect teacher pay and assistant positions.
"There were a lot of possibilities and not a single amendment here. It's really frustrating. The board found all these creative ways to fund line items in the budget instead of salvaging the [cost of living adjustment]."
After the meeting, School Board chairman Dan Storck offered this explanation: "For us to have done the kind of funding for a higher COLA would have required even more teacher position cuts and even higher class sizes."
Storck added that, because money was used in this current year in the 2009 budget, and since the school system is so strapped for cash, money won't be able to be used to offset shortfalls in the 2010 budget.
This time next year, the board will be deliberating over the budget and will "deal with the same dilemmas if not worse ones," Storck said.
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