Roanoke County School Board makes first round of cuts
ROANOKE COUNTY- In a time when Roanoke County schools are losing millions of dollars in funding, the School Board is making tough decisions.
The first of those decisions came earlier in the week, when the School Board announced it would be closing Bent Mountain Elementary School. The school is home to 53 children, and closing it would save the County $507,317.
Even with that cut, the County still has a long way to go to close the $8 million deficit in the budget.
We’re looking for cuts with a lot of zeros on the end,” School Board member Jerry Canada said.
Even with the projected savings, however, there has still been much scorn over the decision. Two Roanoke County citizens spoke at the School Board’s January 28th meeting, discussing their aversion to the decision.
“A chapter of 100 year history is about to close,” Steve Martin said.
Kimberly Poff’s child was preparing to enter Bent Mountain Elementary School, but will now be forced to attend the crowded Back Creek Elementary. She begged the School Board not to put children into overcrowded classrooms, making them numbers in the system.
The School Board took their pleas into consideration, but still must do everything they can to cut their budget.
“We are not going to make friends this year,” School Board member Jerry Canada said.
There is no way to avoid cutting the budget without negatively impacting students, Canada said, but they will try their best.
“We’ve got to roll up our sleeves,” Chairman Mike Stovall said.
Superintendent Lorraine Lange announced the first cuts on Thursday evening, which amounted to approximately $2.4 million. Along with closing Bent Mountain and Central Middle School, Lange also proposed reducing or combining Central Office positions to save $317,296; eliminating school board-funded field trips to save $24,000; and discontinuing sixth grade intramurals, to save $8,901.
Even after discontinuing all of these programs, and more, however, they are still short by millions of dollars. The biggest problem is personnel, which is the by far the School Board’s largest expenditure.
To make up the rest of the money, Lange and the Board members asked the school principals to crunch their numbers to come up with a way to schedule teachers more effectively: either by reducing the number of classes taught, taking away some of teachers’ free periods, or changing scheduling, such as from a seven-period day to a block schedule. Many principals were reluctant to change scheduling, because their current schedules seem to be working effectively for both their students and teachers.
No matter what, schools are looking at a reduction in the number of teachers, and an increase in student to teacher ratio.
In the Cave Spring area, however, the School Board plans to change school boundaries to reduce the student-teacher ratio. Penn Forest and Oak Grove Elementary schools both suffer from overcrowding. Hidden Valley High School and Cave Spring Middle School are so far past their design capacity that students are having share lockers, or going without them completely.
With the completion of the elementary school renovations, the School Board believes that this is a good time to adjust attendance zones. This will affect elementary, middle, and high school students in the Cave Spring area by the 2011-2012, or 2012-2013 school years.
For more information about the redistricting, including maps of the redistricting plans, please visit http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/roecnty/Board.nsf/Public?OpenFrameSet
