By Debbie Hall
The Patrick County School Board adopted their more than $28 million budget for fiscal 2019-2020.
The state approved $589,000 for the division to give the pay hike for Standards of Quality (SOQ) positions.
The local spending plan includes a request for $542,477 more in local funds to give the raise to certain positions, Schools Superintendent Bill Sroufe said.
“This is not a match. It is to fund non-SOQ positions,” Sroufe said of positions in the transportation, maintenance and cafeteria departments.
Ronnie Terry, vice chairman and of the Blue Ridge District, asked if the division has a plan in case the county does not provide the additional funding.
“The board would have to come up with a way to divvy that (state) money up” or give it back to the state, Sroufe said.
For example, the state allows for 8.25 seventh grade teachers, but the division includes 13 teachers for that grade level, Sroufe said. If the county does not provide the needed local funds, Sroufe said the school board could only give the raise to eight teachers.
He suggested using tenure to determine which teachers would receive the raise.
“You can’t take that money from the state and divvy it up, right,” Terry asked.
Sroufe replied that 5 percent raises must be given to SOQ positions funded/approved by the state.
Brandon Simmons, chairman and of the Dan River District, said he does not envy the supervisors for what they have to go through, but did want to address comments about made by a supervisor.
One of which was “the last time they gave us money for raises for school employees, it wasn’t used for raises. That is 100 percent false,” Simmons said. “We did give everybody that raise, two years ago. Another thing that was said was that the county had to take over the” the school division’s debt service “because we made default and did not make our payments,” Simmons said.
However, when the county approached the school division about taking over the debt service, “all of our debts were paid, and we gave them $700,000 that we had at the end of the year to go toward that debt,” Simmons said. Additionally, “had they not taken the debt, we would have still paid the debt.”
Simmons said falsehoods like that don’t sit well with him and put the school system in a bad light.
He said he also heard many times that Sroufe will get an $8,000 raise this year. However, “that’s not true,” Simmons said, adding that Sroufe’s raise this year will be $5,616.99.
According to the terms of his contract, Sroufe may receive a 5 percent raise just as other SOQ employees, according to Simmons and Walter Scott, of the Smith River District.
Sroufe said superintendents typically have six-year contracts, which are renegotiated in the second year.
“We have given raises that I have refused to take,” he said, adding he took only a 2 percent raise two years ago and the one given when his contract was renegotiated.
“Another thing I would like for people to know is that when some people are talking about the budget, and they’re talking about the central office, we have cut or not funded three or four positions in the school board office in 13 or 14 months,” Simmons said of the vacancies that were created through attrition.
“We’ve cut over a $1 million in the last couple of years, Terry said.
The school system is asked to cut their budget when enrollment is down, Scott said. “I wonder if the county has cut their budget because enrollment is down. There are fewer people in the county.”
“I’ve been on the board for 12 years, and we get the same question from across the aisle every year: ‘What’s the minimum we’re required to give’” Terry said, adding the locality is near the bottom of local support among all localities in the state.
“We do a lot with what we have. It’s because our teachers work hard, and I’m getting tired of the other side putting the school system down. It’s getting old; very old,” Terry said, adding that when teachers see that the county is not going to support the school division, “they’re not going to stay here. Young teachers are not going to stay here. I think we’re going to see a lot of teachers leaving next year too” to go to areas with better pay.
“They don’t realize that we’re funded on the number of kids. They’re basically at the minimum now, and that part is not going to change. If this board decided to close a school or two, the amount they give the school system is about as low as they can go,” Sroufe said.
Annie Hylton, of the Peters Creek District, said “closing a school is not going to increase the number of kids.” She added that she does not want to close schools.
Terry said he understands the county is “in a bad position, but it’s not our fault. I think if they would work with us and we could work together, we could get stuff done for the good of the county.”
But, he added, that is not likely to happen. “It hasn’t happened in the 12 years I’ve been on the board.”
