Comments from Brian Wheeler to

Albemarle County School Board on 2002-2003 Budget

February 6, 2002

My name is Brian Wheeler. I am the parent of a fourth grader at Murray Elementary and a member of the Albemarle County Schools Parent Council. Tonight I am speaking on behalf of the Murray community as Vice President of our PTO.

A great deal has changed since I last spoke at this hearing two years ago. At that time, the Murray community's greatest concern was class size. My daughter was in one of the two grades at Murray with a population bubble. She had 27 students in her second grade class. We raised our concerns that the application of differentiated funding was a rob Peter to pay Paul approach that had resulted in numerous elementary and middle schools, those with the small free and reduced lunch populations, ending up with larger classes on average than our high schools.

You responded by adding Class Size Emergency Relief to the budget for each of the last two years, something our school has been able to take advantage of to gain a few additional fractions of a teaching position. And for that we say thank you. It is very important that you retain these emergency relief positions in this budget to ensure Dr. Morgan and the principals can smooth out the irregularities of inevitable class size bubbles and the drawbacks of differentiated staffing. I support differentiated staffing, but I think it should be applied to a higher baseline class size.

My daughter's class size has not changed. She still has the largest class at Murray. We still struggle with staffing resources as one of the smallest elementary schools. Each year our enrollment and budget numbers require a careful calculation by our principal to determine if we have enough resources to create separate classrooms for grades K-1. This year we are very pleased to have two classes for both kindergarten and first grade with 17-20 students each. To make that work however, we had to sacrifice a lot of TA time.

How do we do it? Well we are making do with less from the County and we are asking more from our parents. That sounds a lot like the dynamic you are facing with the government doesn't it? The state and federal government send you more and more unfunded mandates, while at the same time withholding bigger pieces of the pie it has promised. Then the state, like the County, now finds itself considering cutting programs in the face of revenue shortfalls. The state, through its form of differentiated funding, the composite index, shrinks the pie even further for Albemarle because of our "ability to pay." Do you see where I am going with this?

Isn't the School Board always asking Murray to do more with less? Get your students passing the SOLs, get Murray accredited, get your teachers to do more work at home, attend after-school functions, buy your own supplies. But can we have enough teachers to get class sizes closer to 20 pupils. Can we have a full time music teacher? No that is not possible, Ivy you have the ability to pay!

How do we pay in Ivy? Meriwether Lewis Elementary's PTO is paying by donating $10,000 this year to the school to pay for additional TA time. Murray's entire PTO income will be about $15,000 this year. We will certainly invest that money wisely to improve our school, but what does this say about the state of funding public education in our County? Do PTOs need to levy the taxes because the Board of Supervisors does not? Because the state, through the Dillon Rule, does not give them the flexibility to raises taxes other than through real estate assessments and meals taxes. Because the state, by pursuing its misguided car tax relief, now finds itself unable to support us here in Albemarle. I want a bumper sticker that says "My honor roll student needs Gilmore's car tax."

This is a vicious circle that has not changed. Imagine where we would be if you had not had the courage to send your past two budgets to the County one of which required a modest tax increase to support it.

I started by saying things are very different now than they were two years ago. They are. The state is in worse shape and Albemarle is in better shape, because we placed a priority on funding education. Two years ago we were very disappointed with Dr. Castner's budget which was not a compelling needs-based request. Millions of dollars of important programs were labeled "unfunded" and presented in second and third tiers prime for cutting by those of you who place a priority on drawing a political line in the sand. That line you won't cross is to risk asking for more than the County might have available in its revenue projections. You attach the shameful label of "unbalanced budget" to any request that exceeds those projections, and I am sure some of you would oppose any effort by the Board of Supervisors to raise property taxes, no matter what our administrators or parents like myself say the schools need.

Why don't you help us break this vicious cycle. Support a budget that meets our needs! We do have resources in Albemarle that the state does not. Demand that we get the power to tap into them. I don't know that we need a tax increase. If we do need one, wouldn't it be better if we raised income taxes? What about a bond referendum for capital projects? Look at the trends around the state of communities submitting requests to the general assembly to take on taxing and referendum powers. Northern Virginia has unmet transportation needs. We have unmet education needs. I wouldn't want to ask the public for money to become the transportation capital of Virginia, but you better believe I would do it to get more teaching assistants, more literacy specialists, more gifted and special education teachers, lower class sizes and the salaries to attract teachers and keep them here. Dr. Castner and staff have given you a conservative budget. He has asked staff to pare it down to the bone with no new initiatives. I think he and his staff should be commended for presenting the budget in this fashion during these tight economic times and challenging you to consider our needs and the priorities you established as a board. We have gained a lot of ground, but this should not be the year to throw things in reverse.

It is your responsibility to ask the County to pay for those needs with this funding request. Your leadership and cooperation with the Board of Supervisors is required to break this cycle and to empower Albemarle to set its own agenda for quality of education. The state's agenda is a joke, in the form of the Standards of Quality and their lack of funding even those minimal goals. It is totally inadequate.

Don't back off from the 3.3% compensation increase you determined would make us competitive. I urge you to support that proposal. Send that to the Board of Supervisors and challenge them to support it.

Don't even think about lowering the baseline class sizes or cutting literacy specialists as a trade for better salaries. Penny wise and pound foolish.

Thinking about changing how you count special education students? The report you reviewed yesterday showed Murray would lose .38 FTEs if you stopped the "double counting" of special education students. That is huge to us. There goes any benefit of class size emergency relief. Penny wise and pound foolish.

Why on earth does the Daily Progress call for postponing the conservation easement program in order to shift $1 million to our schools? Have we reached the point we have to sacrifice part of what makes Albemarle a wonderful place to live so we can pay the teachers we are entrusting with our children's future a competitive wage? I don't think we have reached that point. Penny wise and pound foolish.

One of my projects this year at Murray was to establish a teacher's wish list. We send the list to our Internet e-mail list of about 265 people, well over 75% of our parents and ask them to help buy our teachers supplies for the classroom. We didn't put any limits on the requests. Well here are the hottest items on the list this year:

If you have any concern about how we are spending tax dollars at Murray, let me tell you, our stock room is obviously not overflowing with office supplies. The letters of appreciation the PTO gets from teachers for providing these simple things is overwhelming. It tells me we have a lot of the big supplies that we should be grateful for, but it also tells me these teachers that make such modest salaries and have such a huge commitment to our children were obviously buying all this stuff themselves before we asked if we could help. It all adds up.

We need you to add up these needs, big and small, and put excellence in education on Murray's wish list for this budget. Thank you.