County School Board needs to try harder

Well, now we know who can — and who cannot — make the hard decisions.

Last week, the Albemarle County School Board sent up to the Board of Supervisors a budget that was unbalanced by $4.9 million.

Out of a proposed budget of nearly $170 million, county staff identified only $103,000 in cuts.

They also found about another million in additional revenue.

Some School Board members complained that Superintendent Pam Moran and her staff had not done enough to pinpoint cuts on the one hand and revenue sources on the other, so that the budget would balance. Board member Pam Moynihan said she was disappointed that staff had not produced a tiered list of cuts, showing where reductions would have to come in order to close the gap.

Still, with the exception of Jason Buyaki, who said his conscience would not allow him to support the proposal, the board voted to pass it along to the supervisors.

Contrast the county’s paltry efforts with the work of Charlottesville Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins and her staff.

Faced with a revenue-to-expenditure gap of some $4 million (with possibly more to come), city staff got together to devise for Charlottesville’s School Board some very difficult budget proposals. In order to erase expected deficits as severe as these, staff said, a number of steps would have to be taken, including the drastic step of closing down one school — thus eliminating numerous staff positions — and cutting other staff as well at other schools, including two assistant principals.

There are still some unknowns in the budget — whether City Council will give the schools an extra $1.1 million as requested or whether council will permit the schools to shift money that has been saved for school renovations into school operations instead. The final extent of cuts isn’t known.

But city school staff have gone a long way toward eliminating that gap. They stepped up to the plate and faced a demanding situation with some difficult choices, showing how millions of dollars potentially could be sliced from the budget.

County school staff, and the School Board, didn’t wrestle with anything nearly that agonizing. A mere $103,000 in cuts was all the staff put forward.

And note the proportions. Cutting roughly $4 million from a general budget of $55.2 million (the baseline amount of city schools’ current budget) is a much tougher job than cutting roughly $100,000 from the county’s $170 million budget (as sent to the Board of Supervisors).

That $103,000 million cut is so paltry, county staff should have been ashamed to present it to their board. They especially should be ashamed to face their city counterparts, who managed to do what they failed to do: Propose serious and effective spending reductions.

County School Board member Eric Strucko said that a tight schedule made it difficult for staff to find more cuts before sending proposals to the board. He emphasized that the budget was still a “work in progress.”

It better be. A hundred thousand dollars in cuts and a million in “found” money just isn’t good enough when the need amounts to several millions.  

County staff should have done better.

The county School Board should have insisted.