Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 29, 1993 TAG: 9301290225
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
MONEY WILL BE TIGHT, WARNS PULASKI SUPERINTENDENT
The Pulaski County School Board will have to resort to a policy of "selective negligence" to get through the 1993-94 school year on the money available, according to its superintendent.William Asbury told the board that he hated to put it that way, but "it's going to be a year where we make tough decisions on top of tough decisions."
The board saw a survey of all its employee groups with teachers, aides, clerical workers, custodial and maintenance personnel, bus drivers and cafeteria workers ranking what they saw as main school needs. Every group put salary increases at the top.
The school system will be about $300,000 behind before the next school year even starts, including a $230,000 reduction from enrollment declines and revenue-structure changes, plus rising costs such as medical insurance premiums.
"I wish I had better news for you," Asbury told the board at a budget workshop Wednesday night. "A good weekend lottery would help."
The board went through a list of all it would like to fund in the coming year. The list included initiatives that had to be scrapped this year because of a lack of money, including foreign languages in lower grades and planning time for teachers, uniforms for school custodians and replacing old school buses.
The total unfunded needs for the coming year would require $2.8 million in new money.
The actual proposed budget "will look drastically different, probably, than what you have in front of you tonight," Asbury said, although "every single thing on there, I could defend. . . . This is everything that is requested."
The School Board agreed to a preliminary meeting with the county Board of Supervisors March 1 to discuss budget needs informally. The supervisors would like to see the proposed 1993-94 school budget April 5.
"We should be able to meet that deadline," Asbury said.
It will be mid-to-late-February before the amount of state money to localities will be known, Asbury said.
"The General Assembly seems to be moving in the direction of trying to find funds for a teacher salary mandate," he said. "And the figure I keep hearing is 2 percent."
But even if the state requires 2 percent teacher raises, he said, it would provide money only for the number of teachers required under state Standards of Quality and Pulaski County exceeds that number. Localities also would have to pay part of the increases for those teachers in mandated positions.
The county's school system has 342.5 teaching positions, but only 221 of them are required by the state. The state money for the 2-percent raises would apply only to those positions. And, Asbury said, "we would have to put up our share."