Charlottesville School Board closes most of budget gap

After identifying $3 million to replace funds stripped away at the state level from the Charlottesville city schools’ upcoming budget, School Board members spent more than three hours Saturday discussing ways to make up a remaining $1 million deficit.

Provisions in Gov. Bob McDonnell’s 2013-2014 state budget proposal, announced in mid-December, translated to a $4 million deficit for Charlottesville schools.

In working to bridge the gap, administrators first decided to use $1.5 million set aside for renovations and reconfiguration of the division’s schools for general operating costs instead.

Board chairman Ned Michie said he’d rather not use the $1.5 million that way, but that he feels the current fiscal climate makes it necessary.

“To take all of that money and start us back at zero on that time clock makes me uncomfortable,” he said. “It’s also one-time money, so essentially we’re kicking the can down the road instead of making decisions that are more permanent in nature.”

The City Council has also recently agreed to allocate an additional $1.1 million to the schools.

“That’s terrific news for us and significantly changes the conversation we’re having today,” said schools finance director Ed Gillaspie.

Administrators further freed up about $330,000 in the schools’ general fund by instead using special revenue funds to pay for three programs.

The special revenue funds are money given to the schools by the federal and state governments for specific purposes. One of those purposes is help for struggling students, for which the three programs, all of which deal with educational intervention, qualify.

Using special revenue funds to pay for the three programs means schools within the division will receive less discretionary money for funding intervention programming.

“The schools have been using that money to fund things like French Club, sewing and other after-school programs,” said Gertrude Ivory, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “We are not losing intervention for students who need it for reading and math.”

Those shifts and cuts left administrators and School Board members grappling with a remaining deficit of about $1 million Saturday.

Schools Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins presented a list of recommended cuts, which included eliminating three secretarial positions at Charlottesville High School and Buford Middle School, increasing class sizes in grades five through eight by one student and reducing the length of summer school.

She also proposed freezing the division’s science coordinator position, which is being vacated this year, and a technology position while eliminating two instructional assistants at Walker Upper Elementary and a preschool evaluator.

“We’ve cut everything we can think of to not cut anything in the classroom,” Atkins said. “We’ve gone every other place we could to make up the deficit.”

Board member Jennifer McKeever said she’d like the schools to consider adding instructional assistants, currently used in kindergarten and first grade classrooms, to second grade classrooms at a cost of about $230,000, in light of schools receiving less discretionary intervention funds.

“That will reduce intervention dramatically,” she said. “We’re kidding ourselves if we think that literacy is not something that’s going to be affected by these cuts. Therefore, adding IAs is just trying to keep some sense of balance about literacy.”

Administrators and other School Board members disagreed.

“This just seems like the worst possible year to talk about doing that,” Michie said.

Ivory said the added instructional assistants would likely not help achievement scores among second-graders, which have been on the rise in recent years.

“So when you make the recommendation to increase the budget to add IAs, what’s the rationale for that when our testing scores show we’re not dropping?” board member Colette Blount asked McKeever. “I could see the justification if they were going lower, by all means, but I don’t see the justification when they’re going higher.”

McKeever said she would consider supporting cutting assistant principal positions from elementary schools to allow for the addition of instructional assistants for second grade.

The meeting concluded with Michie asking administrators to prioritize additional cuts that could be made. The board could then consider either not using money saved to reduce the amount of one-time funds used to balance the budget or using the money for other purposes, he said.

Half of the original $4 million deficit brought by McDonnell’s proposed budget, about $2 million, came from increased rates in the Virginia Retirement System.

“Since that one hits so many people, I would expect some push back on that,” Gillaspie said. “The General Assembly has underfunded the retirement system now for seven or eight years and every year we’ve been making that complaint. It’s patently unfair to take the issue they created and dump it in the laps of school systems and localities.”

Contribution rates increased by about 50 percent, he said.

“That’s unprecedentedly huge,” Gillaspie said. “Yes, it’s underfunded and we’re not arguing with that fact...but you now have broken it so wholly and to just dump the issue down on localities is ridiculous.”

A change in the way state sales tax is distributed among localities is set to cost the schools about $1.2 million.

The funds are distributed based on how many children ages 5 to 19 live in a locality.

“Because we’re a college town, we were able to count 18- to 19-year-olds who were [University of Virginia] students who resided in Charlottesville, about 2,100 students,” Gillaspie said. “The new methodology says you can’t count them in your locality. They have to be counted in their home districts where their parents live.”

That change is especially detrimental to Charlottesville, he said.

“That’s where we’re primarily different from other localities in terms of the pain we’re feeling here,” Gillaspie said. “The sales tax redistribution hits us significantly.”

The city is also set to lose about $650,000 due to a change in its composite index figure, an indicator of relative wealth used to determine how much state aid school divisions receive.

“It’s a sign that our community is relatively wealthier than others in the state,” Gillaspie said.