Extra Funds Few as Stafford Teachers Flee for Better Pay

By KEITH WALKER
For Potomac Local News

STAFFORD, Va. — Prospects of extra money going to Stafford County schools next year doesn’t look promising.

Stafford County Public Schools School Board Chairman Stephanie J. Johnson met some resistance Tuesday afternoon when she presented the school board’s proposed Fiscal 2014 budget to the Stafford Board of County Supervisors.

The proposed budget includes an $18.8 million increase over last year’s $244 million budget.

Johnson said the extra money would help the school board buy two new school buses and security cameras for 230 buses, reinstate remedial summer school and hire 15 special education teachers, one gifted education teacher, 19 special education paraprofessionals, two bus drivers and two new bus monitors.

Johnson went on to say that the budget increase would also be used for a six percent pay increase for school employees as well as a 2.5-percent step increase for school employees and said that 85 percent of the schools budget went toward salaries and benefits.

Johnson’s told the board that Stafford County schools lost 118 teachers in 2009 and 172 teachers in 2010. In 2011, the school system lost 218 teachers and 239 teachers left the school system in 2012.

Johnson said she believes many of the teachers left for better pay in surrounding jurisdictions.

“Retaining our teachers has become more of a challenge over the past four years,” Johnson told the supervisors. “Highly effective teachers gravitate toward a school system that values their years of experience and expertise.”

Among other things, the school board’s proposed budget would also reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade at Ferry Farm Elementary School and expand slots in the Virginia Preschool Initiative Program for 4-year-olds from 50 to 154 students.

Even with the expansion, there would not be room for all of the 4-year-olds in the county to attend preschool, Johnson said.

“There are currently 200 children on the waiting list at our nationally-recognized Head Start program,” she said.

After her presentation, Johnson took questions from county board members that included how the school system calculates student-to-teacher ratios, the school system’s budget process, how the school board budgets for health benefits, if schools were safe and how much money comes into the system from outside sources.

Johnson said that $3.2 million of the requested $18.8 million increase came from state, federal and other sources. She promised the supervisors she would get back to them with detailed answers to the other questions.

Aquia District Supervisor Paul V. Milde, III said he recognized that teacher raises were always “held in the balance” of tight budgets, but reminded Johnson that money was still short.

“You know as well as we do that we don’t have $18 million,” Milde said. “I know you need money, but you know that we literally don’t have it.”

None of the other supervisors contradicted Milde’s statement.