Sunday, February 21, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Do the math: This is serious
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-3423
Dan Casey
Recent columns
- There's a slip twixt cup, lip for Roanoke coffee shop owner
- 82 years of food fit for the King
- At work, on floor, in life: Rick Schmitt had all the right moves
Read Dan's blog
In the parlance of government and the media, the term "budget cuts" often is an abstract one. And so are the numbers that get thrown around with it.
For example, there are the proposals from Richmond to cut roughly $2.1 billion from the state budget for public schools.
I don't know about you, but my head spins when I hear figures like that.
Today we will attempt to remove the dizzy factor.
We will consider the Roanoke City Public Schools, but they are just one example. Virginia school systems everywhere are grappling with the pretty much the same thing.
Roanoke is looking at budget cuts of about $15 million for the school year that begins next fall, out of a budget that totals about $143 million.
That sounds pretty simple, right? You just "cut the fat." Everybody knows that.
Except they cut the fat and then some last year. They closed schools, sold their buses and axed 88 positions. The fat is gone.
How about if they just lop 12 percent off across the board?
Except that it's not quite that easy, because there are all kinds of dumb state and federal laws called "mandates." Cutting 12 percent across the board would in many cases violate those mandates.
One of those mandates is called the state Standards of Quality. That sets a minimum number of instructional staff a school system needs depending on, roughly, how many students are in the system.
And it turns out that Roanoke schools have substantially more than the required minimum teachers, aides and other instructional personnel.
So Friday, the school administration looked at cutting personnel to the Standards of Quality minimum. Which makes sense because up to 85 percent of a school system's budget is payroll and benefits.
The numbers Roanoke schools came up with are easy for a simple guy like me to grasp.
They could cut 114 elementary, middle and high school teachers, give or take a few.
And 20 teacher aides.
And eight guidance counselors, five principals, 11 assistant principals, four school librarians, eight library aides and 26 clerical staff, plus a handful of other employees.
When you add it all up, it comes to 201 jobs out of 2,014 personnel who serve the system's 13,000 students. (And that is on top of the 88 positions city schools cut this year.)
There are a few things to keep in mind with this proposal.
For one, class sizes would necessarily go up.
In elementary schools, some classes that have 15 students this year would have 24 next year, Superintendent Rita Bishop told me.
In middle and high schools, some classes that have 24 students this year will have 30 students next year. Some high school classes would have more than 30 kids.
Pre-kindergarten programs may end (these are proven to help many children succeed in school later on).
And there may be no more summer school programs (which help urban students maintain learning momentum).
The graduation rate, which has been improving, probably would level off or drop.
Standardized test scores, which have been rising, would probably begin a downward trend.
One thing probably would go up (besides class sizes): the dropout rate.
And then there are little things.
For instance, it might be harder for your child to find a book in a school library with so many fewer library personnel.
Cutting all those clerical workers could make it a lot harder for parents like me to get the phone answered when they call their children's schools.
Heck, it's hard to get the phone answered there now.
And by the way, all of those cuts wouldn't close the city schools budget gap. They would save about $10 million, according to estimates by Deputy Superintendent Curt Baker.
There is still a $5 million gap left.
They could save another $3.1 million by, among other things, laying off central office personnel, eliminating Spanish classes in elementary schools, closing CITY school for high school seniors and closing more schools on top of the four they already have closed.
We still aren't at that $15 million number, but we are getting close, eh? Surely they will get there.
And nobody's taxes will increase one bit.
Perhaps your reaction to this is, "What a relief, no tax increases!" That will put a few extra bucks in your pocket. It could buy you a nice dinner out, or allow you to afford a campaign contribution or two to a tax-cutting politician.
Or perhaps this scenario frightens you. Maybe crime would increase, with more dropout teens on the street. Or your home's value would fall because nobody wants to move to your neighborhood and send their children to the schools here.
Maybe you think it's like farmers eating their seed corn.
Either way, your state lawmakers deserve to know what you think. So give them a call.
If I haven't listed your lawmaker's phone number, you can find it on richmondsunlight.com
