By Brandon Martin
The Patrick County School Board named addressing salaries as a priority at a budget meeting held on Feb. 11.
Superintendent Dean Gilbert laid out two potential plans to increase the salaries of school workers to coincide with Gov. Ralph Northam’s state budget proposal that would pay for a three percent raise for teachers.
“We are looking at doing a salary step, plus 1 percent and a salary step, plus 1.5 percent,” Gilbert said, adding there is currently some flexibility for the school board which will allow for the schools to catch up on stagnant step increases from the past.
“If you give any kind of percentage raise in the first year of the budget, it’ll count towards the three percent in the second year,” he added.
Another issue that will affect employees in Patrick County is the increased rate on the Virginia Retirement System (VRS). According to Gilbert, the employer contribution rate is set to increase from 15.68 percent to 16.62 percent. The percentage increase alone will cost the county an additional $129,000.
“If we do a step, plus one percent with the VRS increase, which we have to, the cost is $464,534,” Gilbert said. “If we do a step, plus 1.5 percent, with the VRS, its $561,093 based on current enrollment.”
After he laid out the numbers, Gilbert discussed the revenue comparison, noting that the school board is only working with $423,000 to get all the potential updates done.
He also said that he recommends addressing the problem earlier rather than later.
“If we don’t tackle some of that this year, we are going to be in a world of hurt,” he said. “We are looking at an $800,000 to $900,000 price tag next year if we do one percent.”
After discussion with the board, Gilbert said he would move forward with the step, plus 1.5 percent, adding “my priorities are first of all, our people.”
Another change that Gilbert listed was moving a couple of teacher assistants from Title I funding, a move that will allow for the schools to have more control over instruction.
He said the assistants were originally moved from state and local funding to Title I funding, or federal money, in order to save the jobs during the recession in 2008. Now he said, “it’s time to move them off of Title I.”
“My personal opinion is we need to do something on these salaries,” Gilbert said. “We definitely need to try to pull those two TAs off of the Title 1, so that can give us some flexibility to support instruction. After that, everything on there is very viable and very valid.”
In FY 19-20, the total expected revenue for the county was $28,004,412.33. Even with some changes to the amount of virtually enrolled students, the projected revenue is $28,427,729.49 which is an increase of $423,317.16.
“In looking at the virtual school that we’ve been budgeting on in the past, we’ve decided that based on how enrollment on that has gone, that we are going to back that enrollment down from 300 to 225. That gives the total (enrollment of) 2,425. Given that we have seen a trend away from that, I think it’s time that we start trying to whittle away at that enrollment,” Gilbert said.
“At the whole program too,” asked Brandon Simmons, board chairman.
“That may be on down the road,” Gilbert said. “Right now, we think this is a good first step. You’re taking a fourth away.”
In addition, Gilbert also explained that the county’s participation in food services programs will offset decreases in funding from other areas.
“When we adopted the school budget last year, we were not a community eligibility program,” he said. “There is a big decrease in the cash received, but there’s an increase in the school breakfast and national school lunch program.”
“We used to not do what we are doing now with the breakfast. We served 100, 150 division-wide, now we are serving more than 500 a day, which is a good thing. Students learn better when they have something on their stomach,” Gilbert said.
He also expects money from lottery funded revenue streams, such as early intervention programs and class size reduction, to start flowing next year.
“For adult education, we are part of a regional grant and that number, the $50,891.78, actually is what we are expecting to receive in the adult education grant this year,” Gilbert added.
The school board also considered various items from staff to include the upcoming budget. Gilbert said that capital projects, like paving, were big items for multiple schools.
One consideration is turning a bridge at Meadows of Dan into a corridor, which Gilbert said would come with Fire Marshal regulations as well. The addition of a walk-in-freezer and upgrades to restrooms, updates to the gym floors at the high school, and extra fencing were also listed among capital projects.
In the area of security, Gilbert floated the idea of switching from the security cameras at the schools over to a cloud base.
“We do have it in one school and the grant pays for most of it. It’s really neat. You can be in Martinsville or wherever you have an internet connection, login and see what’s going on at the school,” he said.
As work continues on the budget, Gilbert said he is formulating an expense budget to present at the next school board meeting, on March 10.
