School Board adopts budget; western PW high school still on track
By Dan Roem
The Prince William County School Board unanimously adopted an $859 million budget for the upcoming year on May 7, bringing mixed results for the western half of the county.Most importantly for future high school students: the new high school at Kettle Run is still slated to open in 2011. Bidding for construction rights is set to start soon.
The 2,000-plus capacity school is intended to relieve overcrowding at Battlefield and Brenstville District high schools.
Construction
Also on the construction front is Gravely Elementary School, located at the north end of Dominion Valley, which remains on schedule to open this fall. Overcrowding at Alvey and Mountain View elementary schools will be relieved by the new school.
A new middle school on the Silver Lake property is slated to open in 2012, regardless of which group ultimately gains control of the larger Silver Lake estate.
Renovations at Nokesville Elementary School have been pushed back an extra year. The renovations had been planned for 2011 while a 10-classroom addition was scheduled for 2012. Now, both projects will be undertaken in 2012.
Salaries and class size
Teacher salaries will increase by 4.8 percent county-wide, down from the 6 percent sought by Superintendent Stephen Walts and the school board.
The pay hike is made up of a 3-percent merit-based step increase for returning teachers and a 1.8-percent cost-of-living raise. Prince William County pays the lowest in beginning, middle and average teacher salaries among nine Northern Virginia localities and is seventh out of nine for maximum pay. The county's cost per pupil is also lower than other jurisdictions in the region.
“I guess it was sort of a good news-bad news situation,” said school board Chairman Milt Johns, referring to the pay raises. “While it didn’t get us to where we wanted to be, it certainly got us ahead of Fairfax and Loudoun.”
The school board had also wanted to cut class sizes, but could not substantially do so because of financial constraints.
With 22 students per classroom, Johns said the county falls within the normal 17-28 student range.
Tax rate
Waltz had first crafted a budget based on a $1.03 real estate tax rate per $100 of assessed value. He later cut that back to base it on a $1.01 rate that seemed more likely to be adopted.
When supervisors set a maximum rate of $1, the school budget proposal was cut further and after the board finally adopted a 97-cent tax rate, even more cuts had to be made.
Every penny on the tax rate is worth millions in revenue and since county funds make up 48.5 percent of the school board budget, a one-cent decrease means a lot of budget cuts.
According to Johns, had supervisors taken an extra nickel off the tax rate, the Kettle Run high school would have been delayed.
“(With a) 92 or 93-cent range, my big concern was that we wouldn’t have been able to build the 11th high school,” he said. “The importance of Kettle Run is something I’ve been discussing individually with (supervisors) since last year, the last budget.”
The final 97-cent tax rate meant the school division got $38.2 million less than it would have gotten had the rate been $1.01.
Growth
As of Sept. 30, there were 72,654 students registered to attend school in Prince William County.
Student growth in the county is expected to continue in the next year, but instead of growing by 1,971 students like last year, next year’s rate is projected to be about 1,100.
“We’re still in growth mode,” said said Ken Blackstone, the director of community services for the school system. “You could describe it as a reduction in growth.”
The reduction of 800 students includes 540 fewer students designated as English-speakers of other languages (ESOL).
Johns said it was “reasonable” to infer that the county’s crackdown on illegal immigration has prompted many illegal immigrants to take their kids out of school. Latino children, American citizens or not, who speak Spanish at home are the largest minority-based group among ESOL students, according to Blackstone.
Robotics
One of the biggest winners in the budget is the county-wide robotics program that originated at Battlefield High School. The program earned a $25,000 line-item in the budget, which won the approval of Gainesville Representative Don Richardson.
“It’s a gesture of good faith to the business community,” said Richardson, who works as a software engineer with Lockheed Martin in Chantilly.
Brentsville Representative Gil Trenum agreed with Richardson about the importance of the robotics program.
“I think we needed the seed money,” he said. “I think it’s a program that really benefits our students. Our students have done really well in some of the competitions.”
Richardson had interlocking interests in securing that money as Lockheed is one of many engineering firms that have donated thousands of dollars and personnel to the robotics program. Battlefield is his district’s largest school.
Robotics students at Battlefield not only compete in events like the county-wide SeaPerch competition, held last month for underclassmen, and the World Championship in Philadelphia for the upperclassmen, but also teach younger students as well, like those at Mountain View.
“I think the older kids can reach the younger kids in ways (adults) can’t,” reckoned Richardson.