School Board makes adjustments to budget

BY SUSAN GIBBS, Record Reporter
Published: May 22, 2008

The County School Board made adjustments to its budget at its regularly scheduled meeting Wednesday, May 14.
“This is our seventh meeting (regarding the budget),” Superintendent of Schools Ray Dingledine told the School Board, just prior to suggesting areas in which $401,320 in required reductions could be made.
The adjustments came in the wake of the Board of Supervisors’ decision not to grant the School Board the additional $693,210 in local funding it had originally requested.
Greene’s Board of Supervisors had passed the County’s Fiscal Year 2008-2009 Budget the night before at its regularly scheduled meeting.
At that time, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors Steve Catalano said: “We’re all very concerned with the financial condition of our residents in the County. We all feel it ourselves. We are very concerned about collection rates in the County because we know that a lot of our people are pushed financially and a bump in the road could result in a … decrease in … the revenue that we actually collect.”
Furthering the County’s financial concerns are the facts that its state aid was cut by $102,543 and, for the first time, it is facing a financial responsibility to the Regional Jail.
In addition, while the County has allocated $569,788 to the Comprehensive Services Act - which is to provide high quality, community-based services to high-risk youth and their families, including those with severe mental health issues - that figure could change at any given time.
In addition, Catalano is insisting that the reserve fund - the fund through which the County pays its bills - be funded on an annual basis.
As a result, County responses to School Board requests for additional local funding have been on the decrease.
For Fiscal Year 2006-2007, the County contributed $640,000 in additional local funds to the schools. For Fiscal Year 2007-2008, year, it contributed $600,000 in additional local funding. . 
For the coming fiscal year, the County contributed $222,140 in additional local funding to the School Board’s budget, and took over funding for buses at an estimated cost of $69,750.
That left the School Board with $401,320 in required reductions to its budget.
Dingledine’s suggestions for making those reductions included: reducing the teacher base raise to 3 percent plus scale adjustments for a savings of $140, 450; reducing the base raise for support staff from 4.5 percent to 4.25 percent for a savings of $52,000; reducing the base raise for administrators from - percent to 3 percent for a savings of $18,952; and, reducing the health insurance increase from 15 percent to 14 percent, for a savings of $15,490.
The reduction of the health insurance increase, Dingledine said, would not “impact the benefit.”
Additional savings could be garnered by having teachers who retire at the top of the pay scale replaced by teachers at the bottom of the pay scale, with no experience to three years experience. And, $14,000 can be saved by having fewer high school staff teaching additional class sections.
In addition, the school security initiative could be scaled back and installed one phase at a time. That would result in a savings of $34,000.
Dingledine also recommended reducing the budgeted teaching assistant increase at Ruckersville Elementary School by one. Another position could be shifted to fill that need, he said.
While that move would result in a savings of $15,000 - leaving a balance of $13,937 to be reallocated, Dingledine suggested, “to an increase in the mileage rate from $.32 to $.48 to be comparable to the County.
Discussions such as these will be ongoing, as the School Board struggles to meet the County’s expectations for fiscal responsibility.
Prior to passage of the County’s budget for the coming fiscal year, the two boards held an unprecedented three meetings.
There will be more: The two boards will hold what they are both referring to as a “post-mortem meeting to discuss financial concerns, and the Board of Supervisors has invited the School Board to attend its annual retreat this summer.