Will lower taxes create school crisis?

Last in a three-part series.

Some parents are quick to claim supervisors’ decision to lower taxes puts a dark cloud over Albemarle schools — but whether lower taxes must lead to a crisis in classrooms is up for debate.

“What did it take for us to implement an idea that was actually better for kids and save us money?” asked Peter Wurzer, director of research for the Albemarle Truth in Taxation Alliance. “We had to have our heads against the wall or the knife at the throat.”

Wurzer was praising a new block scheduling system that the county says will save the schools more than $800,000 per year. It’s that type of efficiency measure, found by scrutinizing how the school system operates, that critics say county educators can enact without harming students’ educations.

The county supervisors have signaled they agree — by deciding to lower taxes slightly for most property owners — despite an outcry from a vocal group of education supporters.

“I have said all along that I will not raise your tax burden,” Republican Supervisor Rodney S. Thomas said, arguing that there are ways to cut spending that would inflict less pain on cash-strapped taxpayers than would additional taxes.

“I feel like there’s a lot more things to be found by picking every stone up, but I don’t think we’re going to get it all in one year,” Thomas said.

Thomas said he believes there is room for more cuts within the School Board’s budget, though he declined to name specifics, citing a need to do more research.

However, School Board members say they’ve already made painful cuts that in some cases could damage students’ education, and they fault the Board of Supervisors for planning to lower taxes.

“You know, the cuts that we’re making are going to hurt the quality of education,” School Board member Steve Koleszar said. “If we have to make even further cuts, we’re just not going to do right by kids, and we’ve accomplished so much and become such an excellent, world-class school system in the past five to 10 years. It’s just a real tragedy to see that destroyed.”

“Fewer dropouts now [and] better educated students mean more productivity, fewer criminals, fewer social problems, fewer needs for social services,” Koleszar said. “If you want to be fiscally responsible and save taxpayers money, you need to spend more now because it will save money in the end.”

Planned cuts

In its proposed budget, the School Board planned to cut 45 employees, including 22 teachers, as part of a plan to reduce spending by about $6 million. The Board of Supervisors’ decision to advertise a real-estate tax rate that lowers most property owners’ tax bills, leaving the school system an estimated $400,000 short of its request, has school officials contemplating where to look for additional savings.

School leaders say the funding situation is setting up a coming crisis. The schools budget is built, in part, on money from the state that will be available only for one year, meaning that there will be an even larger shortfall later, the local officials warn.

In response to a letter from School Board Chair-man Ronnie Price Sr. criticizing the decision to advertise a real-estate tax rate that lowers tax bills for most residents, Republican Supervisor Kenneth C. Boyd said supervisors “don’t have the luxury of being single minded when it [comes] to these decisions.”

Boyd said that it was the “only prudent course of action given the extraordinary economic circumstances.”

Republican supervisors have been the major playmakers in the decision to lower taxes, picking up fiscally conservative Demo-crat Lindsay G. Dorrier Jr. as the swing vote.

Ann H. Mallek, the Democratic chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, and independent Dennis S. Rooker favored a real-estate tax rate closer to 76.6 cents per $100 of assessed value. At that rate, the average resident would have had about the same tax bill this year as last, because assessed home values have declined on average. How-ever, the conservative coalition voted to advertise a rate of 74.2 cents for 2010, the same rate as last year.

Under state law, the board cannot enact a rate higher than the one advertised. And that means less money for the county and, presumably, the schools.

High tech education

School Board members are looking to make cuts that include halving technology spending, dipping about $2.5 million below what they originally planned to spend. But county leaders might not be on the same page about whether it’s essential to incorporate expensive new technology into classrooms.

Bruce Benson, assistant superintendent for operations and systems planning, said that the school division has set out to provide students “21st century” technology.

“I want to make sure every kid has an opportunity to use tools of the 21st century in their classrooms,” Benson said of iPods, computers, e-books and other devices. “Right now, we don’t have the resources to do that.”

“When adults don’t know what to do, they ask questions ... they investigate. They do research. And they make decisions about what they want to do. These kinds of tools allow our kids to do that in an incredibly powerful way.”

Detailed cost figures for some advanced technological devices that the school division has purchased, such as iPods and e-books, were not immediately available. The county has received at least several hundred free iPod Touches as part of a pilot program because the school division purchased new notebook computers from Apple.

Price said during an interview: “We want to give Albemarle students a competitive edge when they go into whatever it might be — the college world or the job market.”

However, Boyd says that not having the latest technology in classrooms does not equate to a crisis.

“I think certainly in the modern world, we need to understand how to deal with technology,” Boyd said in a recent interview. “Now does that translate into: We need to provide iPods for all our kindergarten students? I’m not sure I’ve bought into that yet.”“I had four kids who went through the Albemarle County school system without the advantage of iPods. … They’re all in high-tech, 21st-century jobs now,” Boyd told Price and School Board member Eric Strucko at a recent meeting.

“They were taught with a blackboard,” Boyd said. “Twenty-first century jobs were not closed out to them because they didn’t have those available to them.”

Strucko responded: “I don’t know, Ken, where your children picked up this skill, but I want David Strucko and Claire Strucko to learn this skill in Albemarle County public schools, to give them that much more of a competitive advantage when they apply to colleges and universities or apply for a job.”

Rooker came to the School Board’s defense, arguing that when Boyd’s children were in school, many of the devices used nowadays hadn’t been invented.

“They were learning on the technology of the day,” Rooker said, adding that the Facebook social networking site was created by “some guy” sitting in a college dorm room. “You’re not going to grow the country — you’re not going to grow technologically — unless you’re on the cutting edge.”

Boyd responded to the concerns: “I’m not saying that I don’t think we need [new technological devices]. I’m just saying it’s not a crisis if we don’t have them.”

Sparing teachers

Boyd, largely considered the leader of the conservative movement in Albemarle government, has said he thinks the School Board should be looking elsewhere before making the planned teacher reductions.

“Do we need all those support and back office people? I don’t know,” Boyd said in an interview. “That’s certainly for the School Board to determine, but that’s certainly what I would be cutting, rather than classroom teachers.”

“The people in the classrooms are the ones I’m concerned about,” Boyd said. “I think they’re the ones who ought to be saved, at all costs.”

Several school administrators have been cut in the past two years, and administrators say they have a lean central office. After a resource utilization study was conducted, the school division “reorganized the central to put in an organizational structure that is more in line with what you might find in comparable sized divisions in the commonwealth,” Benson said.

Albemarle officials say the division spends about 74 percent of its budget on instruction, substantially more than the state average.

Of the School Board’s approximately $145 million budget, about $121 million goes toward personnel costs, 81 percent of which is for instruction, primarily classroom teachers. About 5.6 percent is for transportation personnel, such as bus drivers; 1.8 percent for technology personnel; 4.7 percent for administration/attendance/health personnel; and 6.8 percent for building services personnel such as custodians.

“I think they’re just not aware that every position within a building that’s not a teaching position actually supports the teaching that’s going on,” Price said.

Thomas questions whether the school division is doling out benefits packages that are too robust.

“Of course, the biggest thing that hits you probably is the benefits package is so expensive. I know it’s kind of a taboo thing for most people to attack — or look at — but it is exorbitantly high,” Thomas said.

As for teacher pay, Thomas said: “I think the teachers deserve what they are getting, but can Albemarle afford to keep doing that?”

“I just don’t think we can,” he said. “I’d rather keep all the teachers and use a furlough or reduction in pay for a while and see what happens.”

The bottom line?

School administrators hope to cut at least 22 teaching positions without any layoffs. Officials have set aside about $800,000 for an early retirement incentive plan.

“The bottom line is we’re going to have fewer teachers teaching more students,” Benson said. “It’s quite possible that attrition could take care of the positions we need to reduce.”

Republican Supervisor Duane Snow said he does not foresee any teachers being laid off, adding that he doesn’t think there will even be any teachers removed from classrooms.

“They were not 22 teachers from out of the classrooms, from what I understand,” Snow said. “You’ve got to ask yourself: Who are they calling a teacher?”

“The only thing that I heard that would sound like a cut to me was, we’re getting rid of two principals,” Snow said. “And I asked them to see if they could find a way to keep them in there.”

“Each year, in the past ... they would have teachers in the budget that weren’t actually there. They were frozen positions but they went ahead and got the money in case they wanted to put them in there,” Snow said. “So, now that those phantom teachers aren’t there anymore, I believe they’re calling some of them eliminated.”

Maury Brown, the school division’s communications coordinator, said: “Any position reductions in the Albemarle County public schools budget is a reduction of a person. There are no placeholder or phantom positions in our budget.”

“Teachers currently employed will lose their positions as the total number of teachers is reduced,” Brown said. “We do not have any unfilled teaching positions occupying the budget.”

Snow said: “I’m just merely guessing at this thing. I’m just going by what I heard, and I never heard them once saying, ‘Well, we’ve come up with this budget but you realize we’re shutting down three classes.’ That never came out.”

The supervisors, by law, cannot set a tax rate higher than the one advertised, so educators’ warnings about the dire consequences of additional cuts have so far gone unheeded. The board could, however, still increase funding for schools by diverting money from the general government division. Traditionally, the school system has received approximately 60 percent of county real-estate tax revenues, and the board could choose to up that figure to give the schools a larger piece of the pie.

But for that to happen, the school system will have to win over some very skeptical supervisors.