My name is Brian Wheeler. I am the parent of two students at Murray Elementary where I am the PTO President. I want to address two issues tonight, redistricting and teacher compensation.

Redistricting—This is the 14th meeting since April of this year at which the board has heard about redistricting. A lot of your time has been spent on this subject, not to mention the time of countless parents and committee members. Yet we have not redistricted a single student. In fact it has been like watching a train wreck in reverse, and it keeps crashing into one station (or neighborhood) after another. Since the Middle School Redistricting Committee started its work, with little direction from this Board as to priorities, this process has been going backwards. The best thing you can do is to stop the train. Bring this middle school redistricting process to an end.

This Saturday’s meeting with your long range planning committee, the first ever joint meeting between your two groups, is where the process should have started. Please don’t let the spot redistricting at Walton be the focus of your valuable time Saturday. Spend those hours discussing the Board’s priorities for redistricting. Get feedback from your experienced committee members as to the challenge of juggling those priorities. Exchange information about the public’s concerns raised during this redistricting process. Discuss the County’s Comprehensive Plan and how we are going to address its educational directives with continued growth.

Here is a question you might ask--Do we all understand and believe the enrollment projections in connection with Albemarle’s designated growth areas? I recently received a report on the most recent Crozet master planning meeting. They believe an additional 12,000 people will live in Crozet over the next 10 years. Yet in 2007, Western Albemarle High School is projected to have only 63 more students than it does today, and Monticello only 14 more students. That must mean Crozet is going to become either the swinging singles capital or the retirement mecca of Albemarle. Where are the children in these enrollment projections? Are they coming all at once between 2007 and 2012? As Crozet gets built out as a designated growth area then we need to plan for the educational infrastructure to support it. This is how Loudoun County got into trouble. They had vast acreage with a backlog of building rights, then the people started coming and the builders started building to meet the demand. It happened too fast for the County to keep up with the school construction, and growth doesn’t pay for itself. Let’s not make the same mistake.

Teacher compensation--I am pleased that taking a fresh look at compensation is in your priorities for 2002-2004. You need to revaluate the methodology used to assess the division’s salary structure to use market averages instead of the market median. Please take note that the salary scale for 2001-2002 which you used previously was corrected in the packet you received yesterday and now is more accurate at the high end of the scale. For example, the 30 year average salary has gone up from almost $46,000 to almost $48,000, that is over a 4% correction, or about $2,000 dollars. In the 2002-2003 data you received that number has gone to over $49,000. That is a huge difference on the benchmark for our experienced teachers, employees who should not be taken for granted.

Please give a hard look at the competitive market. How do these localities compare to us when it comes to the composite index and ability to pay? How do they compare when it comes to cost of living? How do they compare when it comes to the competition to win new teachers. Make sure it is a fair and instructive competitive market.