ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997 TAG: 9704040014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DON AND SUSAN GARDNER
THE HUE and cry for the Bedford Board of Supervisors and the Bedford School Board to "just get along" ignores the reasons behind the disagreement.
This occurred after the supervisors voted down the School Board's request for a $3.5 million Virginia Public Service Authority bond and an additional $10 million literary loan bond recently. Let us look at some of the reasons for this disagreement.
In conversations with the supervisors, none of them deny the need for additional schools in this county. However, they all expressed concern with the way school-construction bond money had been handled in the past, and felt a need for more control in future construction projects.
In one supervisor's words: "I can't in good conscience ask Bedford County taxpayers to indebt themselves without knowing for certain they are going to get what they are being asked to pay for. And based on past history, they haven't gotten it."
In July 1994, Bedford County schools bought an 11-acre hollow on the west side of Stewartsville Elementary School for $66,000 for the building of a primary school. More than $200,000 has been spent on moving dirt and excavation, and now all there is to show for it is a big hole, known locally as the "the crater." This primary school is not to be found on the 1997 capital improvements six-year plan, nor are any plans drawn up.
In fall 1995, the Bedford County Board of Supervisors approved a $4 million bond request by the School Board and Superintendent John Kent for cost overruns on the Staunton River and Montvale projects. The cafeteria-to-library conversion at Staunton River High School is not complete, nor has the renovation of A and B buildings begun.
We have been told that the A and B building renovation will have to forgo gable roofing, as originally planned, because there isn't enough money left from the bonds that were sold for this project to do it. Also, there is not enough money left to convert the present library into office space, as was described in the bond application. There are suggestions of adding a fifth phase to the previous four-phase plans with yet another bond to pay for Phase V.
In 1996, the supervisors voted to approve a $6 million bond to add 10 classrooms at Moneta ($1 million); 10 classrooms, a cafeteria and a gym at Stewartsville ($2.8 million); four classrooms and a gym at Huddleston ($835,000); and money for land, preliminary grading, and architects' and engineers' fees at a northeast elementary school ($1,284,000). All but about $2 million is gone.
At Stewartsville, we have an 11-acre hole and no classrooms. At Moneta, the lot next door was purchased and cleared, but no classrooms were built. At Huddleston, a gym is being built, but no classrooms. There is no land for a northeast elementary school, and there are no completed plans for this school. Now the School Board wants another bond to do essentially the same thing at Stewartsville for the third time.
However, in our estimation, worse yet is the fiscal condition of the day-to-day operating fund of the schools.
For the past three years, the 20-plus Bedford County schools have not received their last school allotments until the following fiscal year. (That is, the budget allocations were not distributed as expected in April, but in July, the following fiscal year.)
Before the last School Board election, Superintendent Kent denied there was a shortage of operating money for the schools. Now, he circulates memos asking for support for increased funds.
The comprehensive audit of all county departments ordered by the Bedford Board of Supervisors shows that the schools have had more than $2 million worth of unpaid bills carried over from the last fiscal year to this fiscal year, and that the county had to contribute an extra $1.7 million because funds from other sources (state and federal) were not received as had been estimated when the school budget was prepared.
It is our understanding that a memo has been sent to Bedford County principals that per-pupil allocations will be cut from $10 to $8 for this trimester. Will the third trimester remain unpaid, as it has in past years? At Staunton River High School, certain classes have been combined into one, and some have been deleted in the middle of the semester so that teachers are available for other duties.
The question should be: Why have these deficits accumulated? Why aren't funds distributed as the budget required? It seems that no matter how much is budgeted for instructional funds, the amount gets cut or delayed or both.
Some county officials have estimated that it will take 10 to 15 cents per $100 of real-estate valuation tax to simply clear up deficits and pay for an unbudgeted $1.9 million bank loan that the School Board borrowed for computers and their wiring without prior approval from the supervisors.
Certainly there is a need for technology in the schools, but the supervisors need to know in advance to plan a budget for the county. This does not address the other needs of the school budget or the other county departments (library, sheriff, etc.)
Given the disastrous shape the Bedford County school system is in, it seems unthinkable that the School Board would ask its citizens to fund a 3 percent raise for the administrator's salary, as has been proposed at the budget work sessions. If the aforementioned performance were in the private sector, the board of directors would demand a change in management. Why does our School Board not demand better management or assume responsibility to see that it happens?
The above information came from conversations with the supervisors and School Board members, and from public documents. The citizens must demand better of its employees and become involved to see that it happens. Our children, our future and the future of the county's fiscal reputation is on the line. Simply throwing money at the problem without safeguards to prevent a repeat of fiscal mismanagement would be irresponsible.
Don Gardner-is president of| Citizens Who Care, a Bedford County school-advocacy group, and Susan Gardner is active in the Staunton River High School PTSA. They live in Huddleston.
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