Greene County School Board wrestles with budget challenges

Public school divisions around the commonwealth are grappling with extensive anticipated budget shortfalls as superintendents and school boards prepare for the 2010-2011 school year.
The Greene County School Board held a special board workshop last Saturday to discuss budget considerations.
Faced with tough choices and no more “low hanging fruit” as superintendent Dave Jeck told the board at its regular meeting Jan. 13, the board is looking at the unappealing choice of deciding how to balance needed reductions with personnel and programming issues.
“We’ll have to look at personnel, programs, contract days and salaries and material and supplies,” Jeck told the board at that time. “I can’t stand here and tell anyone it’s not going to be painful, because it will be.”
Saturday’s meeting did not produce anything new to mitigate the facts that are already on the table, Jeck told the Greene County Record in an e-mail Monday.
“It was a good meeting, but there wasn’t much in the way of discovery,” Jeck wrote. “The board basically gave me some direction regarding budget reductions for the coming school year, but we were essentially on the same page regarding where to look first.”
Jeck said he would be proposing $581,000 in personnel cost reductions as a starting point.
“If we have to cut more, we’ll have to look at some other options which will be more painful,” he wrote. “The majority of the reductions that we are looking at now relate to lower program enrollments, not backfilling positions due to retirement or resignation and the reorganization of certain programs and positions.”
Gov. Bob McDonnell has said he will not propose a new budget to the General Assembly, now meeting in Richmond, but will, instead, let the assembly wrestle with the budget prepared by former Gov. Tim Kaine before he left office Jan. 16.
Add that unknown quantity to a lack of clear direction as to what the Greene County Board of Supervisors will be able to provide in terms of funding and the School Board is left with a very unclear picture of exactly how much money with which they will be working.
“The direction from the Board of Supervisors is to expect no new funding for any county agency, but aside from that direction we have no idea what the local revenue forecast will be,” said Jeck. “(The BOS) told us at their Jan. 12 meeting with them that they simply do not know what the county’s revenue situation is. We are flying blind to some extent, but so is every other local agency.”
The board’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Feb. 10, beginning at 7 p.m. in the School Board conference room.