ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Why do the costs of education keep rising in Pulaski County even though the school system has lost thousands of students since 1980?
That is the question Supervisor Bruce Fariss said his constituents have been asking him. So Fariss asked school officials Monday night when the School Board presented its proposed $26 million budget to the Board of Supervisors.
Despite the seeming paradox, there are plenty of reasons.
School Board Chairman Lewis Pratt noted that schools are being required to provide more services all the time. Superintendent Bill Asbury said children requiring special education have gone from a handful to more than 600 today, often with only five or six in a class.
Member Rhea Saltz said state standards of quality keep rising. Asbury noted the rising costs of textbooks as well as general increases since 1980 in utilities, goods and services the school system must buy.
Saltz also pointed out that a reduction of 100 students over a year, spread over 11 schools, seldom means sufficient students from a single school or age group to drop a class or a teacher. Besides, the school system has been working to reduce the size of overcrowded classes to provide a better educational system.
Nevertheless, Fariss said rising school costs are going to force the closing, sooner or later, of one or more of the smaller schools that the system now maintains. "A lot of anger will be associated with that and a lot of feeling," Fariss said. But the county will simply have no choice if enrollments continue to decline.
Student enrollment has dropped from 7,739 in the 1979-80 school year to 5,127 this year. Various reasons are given, such as plant closings which send families elsewhere for jobs to a lack of new homes for people who might move into Pulaski County.
Asbury said children are coming to schools today with problems from home that teachers have never had to deal with before. That is one reason the budget includes the addition of two elementary school psychologists.
Finance Director Walt Shannon said the proposed addition of girls soccer and softball could give athletic scholarship opportunities to some students who have no chance for them now. Two additional custodians are being sought because, now, when a custodian is out because of illness, there is no replacement. Custodians have been accumulating extra time off but, because they have no substitutes, never are able to take it.
The school system is canceling its contract with ServiceMaster to save money, even though the private company has gotten county schools cleaner and in better shape than they had been for years. "We think we've learned some good lessons from ServiceMaster," Asbury said, on proper use of cleaning equipment, meeting environmental requirements and handling potentially dangerous cleaning chemicals. "People have to be trained," he said.
The system expects to save $45,000 the first year by doing cleaning and maintenance on its own, and twice that in the second year.
The School Board is asking the county for an additional $371,612 next year, which would make the county's share of school costs more than $8.2 million.
"So much of what drives us is beyond our control. All we can do is come to you and ask. There's no other place for us to go," Asbury said.
He said 80 percent of school costs cannot be changed. The School Board cut more than 20 percent from those things over which it did have control before bringing the budget to the supervisors, Asbury said.
"It's real. It's an honest budget," Pratt said. "We believe deeply in what we're asking for."
The supervisors will look at budget requests from all the agencies they fund April 15. Agency representatives will have a chance to argue for higher appropriations April 29. Tentative approval of a budget and tax rates to advertise for a public hearing is set for May 13. The new budget year begins July 1.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: chart - Enrollment in decline.by CNB