Chesterfield County School Board Budget: A Tough Reality

If any of you had the opportunity to listen to CCPS Superintendent Dr. Marcus J. Newsome make his presentation at the Chesterfield Communicators Network Meeting you would be alarmed and just how deep the potential shortfall to the school budget could be in the coming year.

Of course, much of any County budget is tied directly to State resources and funding and with those areas shrinking from the Governor and General Assembly inability to prevent its own budget shortfalls, now estimated at 3 billion, Chesterfield County will have to address the following estimates: (as of December)

15 million less funding directly from the State
14 million less funding from the Board of Supervisors of Chesterfield
4.8 million less from the State Sales Tax funding
4.6 million less from the State for enrollment purposes

Dr. Newsome now currently sees the impact of the shortfall to be roughly 52 million. Meaning, CCPS will be hace a deficit of 52 million in realtionship to the approved budget. Early last year, Dr. Newsome's Superintendent's message included:

"35% of the available new resources projected for this budget will be dedicated to meeting State, Federal, and local requirements such as Standards of Quality, employee benefits, special education, debt service, and the continued operation of the our buildings and buses"

The CCPS will will directly impacted by two areas; reduction in County Transfer offsets and the reduction of real estate taxs. This occurs at a time when the CCPS will see another increase in enrollment throughout the system. This was anticipated. Since the 2004 Bond Referendum, which was supported by 87% of voters, CCPS has added five schools and has set in motion funding parameters to renovate or build additions to 13 other schools in the system.

Is this current shortfall a direct realtionship with the current economic crisis our nation faces today? Maybe. But a closer look also points to some other issues that most people remain unaware of in terms of the budget itself. Now this is independent of any shortfall, but merely what was being proposed and later budgeted for the CCPS.

I find it rather disturbing that 40% of new revenues, those new revenues that the Board had expected to trickle in when it was reviewing the budget last year, was dedicated to providing salary increases to all employees as well as towards the benefit packages of those employees.

40%. For example out of the 48 million in new resources that was expected over 13 million was to go directly to salaries/compensation plan, 576,000 towards Temporary teacher pay rate increases, and an addtional 2.7 million toward healthcare benefits and 4.6 million toward overall benefits.

In quick study of the budget, and honestly I am no expert in this, but it seems to me that some 80% of the budget is directed or devoted to employee compensation and benefits of those working in and for the CCPS system.

80%.

One thing that has come out in the weeks following the first round of State funding cuts in Richmond has been that the CCPS has forgone its proposed 1% salary increase across the board for CCPS employees.

Such across the board increases have always alarmed this tax payer. These increases have little to do with "performance", which is always frustrating when we are talking about governmental employment. I am impressed that the current Board endeavors to eliminate all postions that are not directly related to the Standards of Quality. I do expect there to be a fight however should the Board have to eventually reduce those positions supported and backed by teacher associations.

May people like to think that there are no Unions in Virginia, but in reality there are many "associations" that fill the void of a "union" per say that are aligned with the NEA nationally and work solely on behalf of teachers and educators.

If you recall, during the election last Fall one such "association" was highly criticized for mandating a "BLUE DAY" in support of Barrack Obama through the Virginia Public School System.

When you listen to all the facts and take the time to review the budgets over the last few years it is very easy to draw some of the same conclusions that many drew with the UAW and the Big Three Automakers. So much of the issues that have faced those companies have to do with contracts for sure, but mainly in the area of wages and benefits. If you review whats facing CCPS there are certainly quite a few similarities. Reduction in revenues from the State and County could be equated to the Big Three's sales problems and how much revenues they are taking in versus their cost structure. The costs of benefits in both areas is staggering and if you include debt service you basically have a majority of the funding requirements.

We still have a few months to go before we get a handle on what the proposed cuts will look like in order to address the current environment, but an agruement has to be made that we need to overall our costs structures at some point in the future and address how it is that a majority of the costs associated with the budget are indirectly related to the education of our children.

That said.

There is a petition at http://www.fundqualityschools.org/ to influence the General Assembly and its funding efforts for Public Schools.

It states that it seeks to "reduce or eliminate proposed reductions in State funding for schools".

While I certainly can support that, we must also be diligent in holding our local officials accountable to where they spend that money that comes in from the State.