My name is Brian Wheeler. I am the parent of a fourth grader at Murray Elementary. Tonight I am speaking on behalf of the Murray community as Vice President of our PTO. I am also a member of the Parent Council and Chief Information Officer at SNL Financial on the downtown mall.

I hear a lot of the concerns from parents and teachers in this County about the state of our schools. I hear these things because I am on the Parent Council, because I am a PTO officer and because I have helped set up over 10 e-mail newsletters aimed at improving communication about our schools and our community.

Do we have good schools? You bet! I am very pleased my daughter is at Murray Elementary. Could our schools be even better given the resources in this County, both financial and otherwise, definitely.

We won’t settle for a second rate school system, and if the state won’t pay its way, then YOU, the Board of Supervisors, needs to take revenue matters into your own hands until they do. Albemarle should 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. We will pressure Richmond, but nobody thinks the state’s priorities will be straightened out quickly. I want a bumper sticker that says “My Honor Roll Student Needs Gilmore’s Car Tax.”

This year's school budget has no new initiatives. What if we wanted art, music and media teachers fully funded in every school? Elementary strings, band or choir programs that would feed into a high school music program of Charlottesville's caliber? What if we wanted foreign language in elementary school? What if we wanted a laptop on every desk? Speaking of technology, I saw an impressive presentation recently by Bruce Benson, the school system’s Director of Technology. Bruce is a former teacher and HE gets it. That “IT” is the integration of technology in the classroom. There are a lot of technology initiatives on the horizon that this school system would greatly benefit from that budgets like this won’t even begin to fund.

In fact the one initiative that was made the top priority was to raise salaries by 3.3% and this board has threatened not to fully fund that effort . Don't back off your commitment to competitive salaries.

You raised our real estate taxes to fully fund the education budget 2 years ago and for that we say thank you.

Ask not how little you can get our school board to beg for, ask if they are requesting enough of you, to put our school system well beyond its peers, in its ability to educate our children to the standard of excellence your constituents demand.

Isn’t that a legacy you would like to leave as a Supervisor. Even better, be fiscally responsible and make sure we get the most for our education dollar. Then even the naysayers in this County, the people that were persuaded by Governor Gilmore’s “less is more” slogans, will join us celebrating our schools and our children’s accomplishments.

Things are very different now than they were two years ago. The state is in worse shape and Albemarle is in better shape, because we placed a priority on funding education. Don't back down on that commitment now. We have gained a lot of ground, but this should not be the year to throw things in reverse.

Support the school system's complete request for one-time money to open Baker-Butler Elementary. You need to make up this $400,000 deficit or our schools WILL start on a backwards course, even if it is slight, it is the wrong direction and our school board will have to make cuts in what was a very austere budget in the first place.

In summary, we need you to put excellence in education on your priority list for this budget. Thank you.