DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 1997          TAG: 9711190521

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   52 lines

BEACH SCHOOL BUDGET IDEAS WOULD NEED MORE MONEY

More than 25 people spoke at a public hearing Tuesday on the school district's upcoming budget.

And everyone - including school board members - asked for more money.

Several people asked that teachers at the Adult Learning Center be paid as well as the rest of the district's teachers.

Parents asked for renovations for Bayside Elementary, full-time athletic trainers for the high schools or the expansion of a preschool inclusion program for children with disabilities.

And some board members said it was time they were paid what school boards in districts of comparable size receive.

The school board is expected to adopt a new budget for the district sometime next year. The current budget is $411 million.

During the public hearing, several people asked the board to include more than $80,000 to upgrade the teaching status in both compensation and benefits of full-time teachers at the Adult Learning Center. Currently, even teachers who teach more than 30 hours of classes a week are not considered full-time employees.

``There is nothing temporary about us other than our classification,'' said Nancy Hildebrandt, who has been teaching adults for 17 years.

``I was shocked to learn that the teachers in this school are not full-time employees with full-time benefits,'' said Edgar DeLong, a volunteer at the center, who added that the teachers there put in long hours and spend their own money on behalf of their students.

``The current situation is disgraceful.''

Board member Daniel J. Arris asked that the board consider requesting that the General Assembly lift the salary ceiling to enable board members to make $7,200 a year. They currently make $3,600, a figure that hasn't been raised since the mid-1980s, he said. If approved, the raise would not go into effect until July 1, 1998. It would add about $39,600 to the budget.

``The fact is, it costs money to do this job. . . . Believe me, I routinely pay teen-age baby sitters more per hour than I get for being here,'' said board member Nancy D. Guy.

Board member Arthur T. Tate said hearing all the speakers talk on behalf of the various programs made it difficult to support the concept of a pay raise for board members.

``We have a tight budget. We don't have enough money to go everywhere the requests are. The $40,000 that is given to us would be better spent at the Adult Learning Center or some other program,'' he said.

In other business, the board voted unanimously to restrict the ways school fund-raisers could be conducted. It adopted a policy that forbids door-to-door selling by elementary and middle school children, the use of prize incentives for fund raising, and the use of instructional time to either promote or celebrate fund-raising activities.

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