County schools approve budget

The Albemarle School Board on Thursday unanimously approved a $151.3 million operating budget, including an overall 4 percent pay raise for teachers.
The budget marks a 2.2 percent increase over the current $147.9 million spending plan.
“We’re glad that we’ve put the budget behind us and now we can focus on the next steps, which is implementing the vision we’ve got for world class schools in Albemarle County,” School Board Chairman Brian Wheeler said. “But I’m aware that we have big challenges in front of us. Next month, we’re going to have work sessions on compensation for future budgets. So this is a year-round conversation for us.”
The largest initiative in the adopted fiscal 2009 budget is $5.9 million for an average 4 percent increase in teacher salaries and up to a 3.35 percent merit increase for classified staff.
The board slashed an approximately $198,000 staffing subsidy for under-enrolled electives — specifically, world languages such as Arabic and Chinese — and the strings program.
“We don’t want to see our core classes suffer to maintain under-enrolled electives,” Superintendent Pamela Moran said.
Board member Steve Koleszar, who last week spoke against the staffing subsidy removal, said that he came to support the cut after learning that it would not adversely affect middle school staffing levels as he feared last week.
The removal of the staffing subsidy does not necessarily spell the end of the under-enrolled electives. Instead, it will be up to school principals whether to fund the positions using money from the school’s budget.
The board also cut an approximately $116,000 payment to the Piedmont Futures regional business-education alliance.
Moran said that she consulted with superintendents in neighboring school districts — Fluvanna, Greene and Nelson counties as well as Charlottesville participate in Piedmont Futures — and determined that support for business-education activities could be maintained even without membership in Piedmont Futures.
“We already have staff providing significant support for business-education activities and we think we can maintain a high level of service using staff across the five districts,” Moran said.
The adopted budget includes around $165,000 to continue planning for math and specialty centers at Albemarle High School and International Baccalaur-eate programs at a yet-to-be-determined number of schools throughout the division. The IB curriculum stresses demanding academics with an international focus.
The board also recently added more than $377,000 to the bus fuel fund. Because of rising fuel prices, the division expects to spend at least $1 million more on fuel in the upcoming fiscal year compared with the current fiscal year.