GEPA Statement at School Board Public Hearing 1/12/2010

Gentlemen of the School Board, Dr. Underwood, thank you for the chance to speak to you today. My name is Kristin McNaron, and I am the mother of a third grader and a rising kindergartener in Goochland. I am the first of a number of parents speaking today on behalf of the newly formed Goochland Education Parents Association, which currently has over 40 members. GEPA intends to supply a copy of the document the individual parents are presenting here tonight to members of the school board, the Superintendent, the County Administrator, the County Supervisors, and representatives from the media.

We’d like to begin by requesting that a third public hearing be held on the proposed 2010-2011 School Budget. As of this afternoon, the current proposed budget has not been shared with the public. The only publicly available draft is dated from December 14th, and contains less than half of the cuts believed to be in the current draft. This does not constitute a good faith effort to gain community feedback on the budget.

We believe that every child in Goochland County has the right to expect a high standard of education, and an efficient educational system designed to promote excellent results at every level. We support the development and maintenance of a balanced, full service curriculum in Goochland County Public Schools to fulfill the needs of every child in our school system, whether they be gifted, accelerated, average, below average or special ed., and regardless of whether their individual talents lie in athletics, music, drama, art, languages, vocational arts, or technology. Every parent has dreams for their child and we believe our education system should offer every child the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Investing in a quality educational system supports property values, which offers an immediate, direct benefit to every resident of the County. The prospect of quality education also helps attract professional residents to the area, supports the development of higher value housing, and attracts businesses looking for qualified employees into the locality, all of which has a positive effect on the growth of the tax revenue base for the county. Looking to the longer term benefits, many GCPS students will eventually return and settle in Goochland County, bringing home their skills and experience a generation from now, to help support and enrich our community.

We want to make it absolutely clear to the school board and the Superintendent, that while we support some of the $700K in cuts proposed in the December 14th budget presented at the December 15th school board meeting, we will NOT support any further cuts to core programs or teaching positions. We feel that you need to take the frontline teacher positions completely off the table. Nor do we support elimination of the center-based gifted program, the reduction of places at the Maggie Walker Governor’s School, the proposed staggered bus schedule or the elimination of middle school athletics.

We feel very strongly that if budget cuts need to be made, they should be made first and foremost in the areas which have the least direct impact on our children’s education, which would include higher level administrative positions, transportation and maintenance. Concerned parents have publicly voiced this opinion to the school board, on numerous occasions, and we are disappointed that the Superintendent and the school board continue to propose cuts to programs and teaching positions, contrary to the express wishes of the parents and citizens of this County.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I would now like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, Jane Christie.



Mr Chairman, members of the board, Dr Underwood, I have lived and paid taxes in Goochland County for 19 years and currently have 3 children in the GCPS system. Like many other parents, I believe that the school administration exists to support the instructional staff and the academic goals of the school board, and if budget cuts need to be made, this is the area where the school board should look first.

According to section 22.1-94 of the Code of Virginia, the Supervisors can appropriate tax revenues to the School Board by categories, as prescribed by the Board of Education per section 22.1-115 of the Code. These categories include (i) instruction, and (ii) administration, attendance and health. Funds appropriated to a given budget category, cannot be spent in a different category, without the express permission of the Board of Supervisors. The approved County budget for the school administrative category is just over $900,000, with the allocation for instructional closer to $20 million. Since December 15th, 2009, I have repeatedly requested the Superintendent and the School Board to identify the positions included under each of these categories, including the non-teaching positions under instructional, but this information has not been forthcoming.

The August 2009 payroll data, supplied by the school board to the Goochland Gazette, and publicly available on the Gazette website, lists a number of positions under the instructional category, which I believe should be included in the administrative category, if I am correctly interpreting Attachment C to Memo No. 215-09 from the Department of Education to the Superintendents, dated August 7, 2009 (and available on the DOE website).

The Department of Education designates a function code of 61000 for the instructional budget category, and a function code of 62000 for the administration, attendance and health budget category, and describes the positions that may be classified under each of these legal categories when the school board files their annual report of expenditures. The following positions, totaling over $580,000 in basic salary (excluding taxes and benefits), are listed as instructional on the Gazette website, but I seriously question whether they can legally be included under the instructional budget category:

Position Base salary DOE code DOE description
Assistant Superintendent $107,279 62120 Executive administration services
Research & Info. Services
Analyst $50,570 62130 Information services
Elementary & Parent
Involvement Specialist $45,438 62130 Information services
Human resource specialist $60,654 62140 Personnel services
Transition specialist $43,287 62140 Personnel services
Human resources clerk $33,011 62140 Personnel services
Teacher induction specialist $32,533 62140 Personnel services
School nurse $43,874 62220 Health services
School psychologist $53,851 62230 Psychological services
School psychologist $42,911 62230 Psychological services
School psychologist $23,469 62230 Psychological services
Procedural Due Process
Specialist $47,973 62150 Planning services

Putting these positions back into the administrative budget category, where I believe they legally belong, has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries and benefits in the instructional budget category, which could be used for the benefit of our children and their teachers. Quite how you fit an additional $600,000 in administrative positions back into the $900,000 administrative budget is an interesting conundrum, but it is one for the Superintendent and the school board to consider.

Other positions that may be worth evaluating as part of the overall budget process include:
Director of Secondary Education $105,812
Director of Elementary Education $66,998
Director of Special Education & Student Services $97,492
Dean of Students $90,301

We currently have two assistant high school principals, each earning a salary in excess of $70,000. According to The Code of Virginia, 22.1-253.13.2 H 2, the school board is required to have one full-time assistant principal in high schools for each 600 students. According to the GCPS website, GHS enrollment is 770, so if we have one full time assistant principal for the first 600 students, then surely the second full-time assistant principal position should not be required until GHS enrollment reaches 1200?

The school board also has a Director of Student Services and Special Ed. and a Coordinator of Student Services and Special Ed. earning a combined basic salary of over $160,000. If the school board proposal is to cut two special education teacher positions by attrition, then how many managers are required for the remaining teachers, and wouldn’t it be more beneficial for the students to retain their teachers, rather than administrative positions? There are also four highly paid technological positions in the school budget, earning nearly $300,000 in base salary (excluding benefits). Can the school board really cost-justify all these high level technological positions?

While no-one wants to question anyone else's position, or put their job at risk, if the alternative is for our children to suffer direct cuts to essential education programs, or the loss of their teachers, then maybe it is time to start looking more closely at the highly paid, non-teaching positions under the instructional, administrative and technological budget categories, which would be left completely untouched under the school board’s currently proposed budget. I believe it is time for the school board to seriously evaluate whether all these administrative positions are necessary, and how many of these job functions could be combined.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I would now like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, Becky Steadman:


Becky Steadman: There are a number of budget areas where our country seems to rank extremely highly for costs on a per student basis. One of these is transportation, where Goochland ranks as the 7th most expensive school district out of 130 in the State, and another is maintenance, where we rank as the 22nd most expensive county in Virginia. The transportation costs are particularly concerning, because our middle and high school children already share a single bus and travel to the same school complex together, and our kindergarten classes are full day, unlike many other school systems that have half day kindergarten, and are forced to provide an additional midday bus run to transport kindergarten students back and forth. Our maintenance costs are also unusually high, given our middle and high schools are located in one, relatively new building. The entire point of having a single building was to contain costs, and share positions, like maintenance, so where are the savings?

John Herrmann has compiled a spreadsheet of comparative county costs for transportation and maintenance, which he has already made available to the school board and we would be happy to provide this spreadsheet to any other interested parties. To summarize John’s research, he compared the Goochland County schools transportation and maintenance costs with the transportation costs of the 40 other “like” sized school districts in Virginia, (those with an ADM, or Average Daily Membership, of 1500-3500 students), and determined that Goochland ranks as the second most expensive in terms of transportation costs. Even if the school board were to reduce the transportation budget by $500, 000, Goochland would still be the 9th most expensive out of these 40 “like” sized school districts on a cost per student basis, and still more costly than other rural school districts, such as Lunenburg, Patrick, Floyd, Grayson, New Kent, Amelia, King William, Charlotte and Prince Edward Counties. And the list of “like” counties, with small student populations, geographically dispersed populations and lower transportation costs than Goochland county goes on….

So the question is why are our transportation costs so much higher than all these other “like” counties? What “best practices” is Goochland County NOT deploying in student transportation services? What overheads do we have that these other school districts do not? Even cutting half a million dollars from the transportation budget, still leaves us at the upper end of the cost scale. If we were to cut $1 million, we would be more in line with other “like” counties. Being a steward of the county taxpayers’ money, we would hope that the school board would want to understand this. Has anyone on the board been delegated to getting to the bottom of this, to do more than just question these numbers, but to fully understand what we are doing in Goochland County that is causing our transportation costs to be so high?

Parents have suggested combining elementary and secondary students on the same buses to reduce transportation costs, which has the potential to offer significant savings in the Goochland Elementary School district, and up to $28,000 for the GCCG students, but the school board and the Superintendent have shown no interest in costing out these options. Other suggestions include having local “bus stops” in a neighborhood, so the buses could stop in one central location to pick up a group of student, rather than wasting gas stopping at every other driveway. The only option the Superintendent and school board have proposed is a staggered school schedule that would cause the maximum inconvenience to every household in the county with children, all for a grand saving of $70,000 to the transportation budget. We request that the school board examines this area in more detail, with a goal of reducing the transportation budget by $500,000.

Goochland county is the 22nd most expensive state out of 130 counties in Virginia in terms of maintenance costs. Even in a “like” list of school districts, with an ADM of 1500-3500, Goochland still ranks as the 8th most expensive out of 40 schools for maintenance costs. So if the Goochland maintenance budget was reduced by $500,000 a year, we would be halfway down the list, as the 20th most expensive school in the state for maintenance costs.

Between transportation and maintenance, the school board could cut $1 million from the school budget, and we would STILL be in better standing than most of our peers. The real question is, why are we spending so much time looking at cutting education programs and teaching positions, when nobody has clearly articulated why our current costs for transportation and maintenance are so high, compared to other school districts in the State?

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I would now like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, John Wright:


My name is John Wright. I have lived and paid taxes in Goochland County for 12 years and currently have 2 children in the GCPS system.

The school board has added $276,000 to the proposed budget for increases in the cost of school health insurance. We do not accept that this increase in the cost of health insurance is a non-negotiable expense for the school board, or that it should automatically be passed on to the taxpayer. An increase in the cost of healthcare approaching 50% over two years is neither reasonable, nor sustainable in the current budget environment, and is out of proportion to the budget cuts being faced by the county, the school system, and individual tax payers, many of whom are dealing with job losses and major household budget cuts of their own. Parents are wondering why health insurance costs for the school system should be allowed to escalate at this dramatic rate, when their children are facing losses of textbooks, teachers and instructional opportunities.

The school board needs to find a better way to control costs, while continuing to offer school employees quality healthcare. First on the list should be to limit the insurance benefit (and all other benefits) only to system employees meeting the standards of full time employment, which is 30 hours per week. Currently, there are employees receiving benefits that do not meet that qualification. Second would be to actively seek alternatives to the current insurance policy. We have been told by Dr. Underwood that a change in insurance benefits could not be implemented until after the school year in question, when in reality a new policy, including employee enrollment can be done in a 4 month period from the moment a decision is made. That would allow more than enough time to make the changes necessary for implementation prior to the 2010-2011 school year, and therefore within this budget. In fact, a change could help provide savings to the end of the current school year’s budget. Money I’m sure is needed.

An alternative to the current health insurance policy I previously discussed with the board is a Health Savings Account. An HSA is a hybrid between health insurance and a retirement plan. Health Savings Accounts couple low cost high deductible insurance plans with a savings account designated for meeting the costs associated with co-pays, deductibles and general medical expenses. HSA’s provide employers with a cost savings and employees with potential additional benefits that would make positions with Goochland County more attractive to employment candidates, not less. The savings associated with HSA’s can be significant. While all policies are subject to underwriting, by utilizing a HAS, employers can reduce their premium costs by as much as 50%, passing most or all of those savings directly to the employees. Employers make contributions to employee’s savings accounts with pretax dollars out of the premium savings. Employees can make additional elective contributions to the savings account component of the plan and receive a tax deduction for those contributions. Further, amounts unused for medical purposes can be withdrawn by employees at a later date, under rules similar to retirement plan distributions. But the very best aspect of this type of plan is that premiums on HSA’s rise at 1/3 to ¼ of the rate traditional health insurance plans do. So the savings wouldn’t just be short term, but long term as well.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I would now like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, Adeeb Hamzey:


Mr. Chairman, madam Superintendent, distinguished School Board members. Good evening. My name is Adeeb Hamzey, and my address is 3189 River Road West, in the Courthouse area. I am speaking in support of the gifted program in general and the Center for the Gifted in particular.

My family and I have been Goochland residents for 15 years and parents of four children who have been a product of Goochland Public Schools. My eldest, Nidal, was among the first graduates of the Blue Ridge Governor School. He is studying Resort Management at Virginia Tech. My second, Rami, graduated from GMS and went to MLWGS. He is studying Kinesiology at USC, Los Angeles. My daughter, Rena, is senior at MLWGS. My youngest son, Tariq, also graduated from GMS and is freshmen at MLWGS.

My family's experience with Goochland Schools has been rewarding, given that we also did our share as parents. The system has improved markedly over the past 15 years, serving student needs at all levels, thanks to all who had a hand in this success story. This progress would have been impossible to achieve without continuous improvement in quality instruction and persistent parental involvement. We have great respect and admiration for the teachers, who challenge our children making them perform to the best of their abilities. It will be shameful to roll back the clock.

Granted that we, like other communities, are experiencing unprecedented financial squeeze, I am deeply concerned that not enough is being done in this budget deliberation cycle to address proper conservation measures and allocation of funds. I offered some energy conservation suggestions to you during last year's budget cycle, and the allocation issue is addressed by other speakers before you tonight. Suffice it to say, cutting or otherwise diluting the gifted program is a major step backwards, at a time when our County, our Commonwealth, and our Nation cannot afford to slip further behind other nations' educational programs.

I stood before your honorable board in February 2001 arguing for much needed improvement in the then Talented and Gifted (TAG) program. After much deliberations and research involving professionals from UVA, the board approved the formation of the Center for the Gifted, as the best format to address the needs of children who are differentiated as being talented and gifted. You agreed then that this center provides the best environment, where like-minded students learn best and are challenged the most. You invested in special training for teachers to give them the tools and help them better understand the best ways these hungry minds work. Later, as proposed by then Superintendent Dr. Frank Morgan, the Board approved a proposal that brought the MLWGS program into the fold of core curriculum and not to be re-evaluated every budget cycle. The reasons for the Center and the MLWGS were valid then, and they are valid now. Cutting them or reducing their effectiveness is contrary to progress.

Goochland County was growing in 2001 and is growing even more now. With this growth comes enrichment in the diversity of our student population. People are choosing to live in Goochland, primarily because we have a respectable school system competitive with the surrounding localities. Families who live in Goochland and sent their kids to private school are increasingly enrolling in the County public schools. Cutting Instructional programs will diminish quality education at GPS and reverse this newly evolving trend. We will all lose perceived long term benefits, if this were allowed to happen.

If we shift our focus away from providing quality education to all students in the whole range of the talent pool, it is possible and highly probable that we will experience catastrophic consequences to our livelihood, properties, and tax base. I am sure none of us want that outcome.

Mr. John Herrmann, whose children are in the school system, researched gifted education programs recently. He found that most experts agree that students in self-contained settings (meaning all students meet the same academic qualifications) fare better in terms of achievement than do similar gifted students in mixed-ability classrooms. My family's experience with mixed ability classrooms supports Mr. Herrmann's findings. It is very inefficient, wasteful, and frustrating to the parents, students, and teachers.

Eliminating the Gifted Center would create a huge reduction in the standard of gifted education in the County; it will have a negative effect on the SOL scores; and furthermore, it will be an in-efficient use of the gifted teacher resource available to the students and funded by the tax payers. Changing back to the mixed setting scenario will cost the public 300% more and everyone loses.

Mr. Herrmann found and we experienced, that not only does a center based program place the kids in an environment that research suggests is beneficial, it places the teachers in a setting that allows them to become "best in class" in their discipline, also. THIS FACT IS OFTEN LOST IN THE DISCUSSION OF THE CENTER PROGRAM, he emphasized.

There is so much to be gained, in terms of instructional efficiency and transfer of knowledge, by having specially trained teachers support children's progress through multiple years, like we have in the Gifted Center in Goochland. The Gifted Center is the most effective approach for the gifted students and teachers. I agree with Mr. Herrmann's findings that this is an exceptional advantage that would be beneficial at all levels of schooling, not just at the Gifted Center. Instead, what we are seeing is an effort by the School Board and the Superintendent to undermine this foundation that took years to build, in favor of short term budgetary gains that could otherwise be achieved through cuts in administrative overhead. As parents, we reject the Board approach categorically.

We strongly believe that the gifted student population needs to be supported and nurtured, specifically since its special needs are not mandated like the other side of the spectrum. Let's not forget that this segment of the student population is the foundation of future leaders at all levels of our society.

We know from following this process that not enough cuts have come from the Administration Section of this budget. Also, I understand that, as part of this review process, shuffling activities have taken place between various sections of the budget, especially between Administration and Instruction, as a means to justify a desired end. If this is the case, we need to know that you are not violating the Code of Virginia, and that the status of the Gifted Center is not unfairly considered.

As a parent and as your constituent, I strongly urge you to reconsider the proposed budget cuts, increase parental involvement, trim more fat from non-Instruction sections of the budget, restore some of the cuts to the Instruction Section, and save the Gifted Center.

You will regain our trust if you refocus your efforts on the best interest of all the students.

Finally, doing anything short of fair and objective considerations for budget cuts will be in direct violation of your own mission of providing quality education to the student population in the County.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, madam Superintendent, I would like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, Cynthia Stansberry. Thank you.


Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Cynthia Stansberry and I have 2 children in Goochland County Public Schools. Earlier in the budget process the school board raised the possibility of eliminating places at the Maggie Walker Governor’s school, so I am speaking on behalf of maintaining all these places for Goochland county students, and would also like the school board to consider adding more places to this program.

What many people do not realize is that the actual cost per pupil to attend the Governor’s school is less than the average cost per pupil in the GCPS system. According to figures from various sources, it costs the schools under $10K to send a student to Maggie Walker, and $2K of that is the state funding we receive on a per student basis, which means it is costing Goochland taxpayers less than $8K a year to send a county student to one of the nation's finest public schools.
It costs us an average of closer to $11K per year to educate our kids in our own school system. Take away the $2K in state funding, and the cost at the local level is $9K. That is almost $1,000 more per child, on average, in Goochland County taxpayer funding to educate a child in the county schools versus Maggie Walker. Maybe we need to think about sending more kids to Maggie Walker, and cutting additional school overhead? Outsourcing gifted high school education for hundreds of dollars less per pupil, would appear, objectively, to be a sound financial decision, especially as Goochland high school does not offer the gifted curriculum that is available at Maggie Walker.

Costs aside, there is no way a small school district such as Goochland can offer 10 foreign languages, approximately 22 AP courses and approximately 30 dual enrollment classes, nor do we have
the number of students to assemble a class of students that can all be challenged with the academic rigor that they receive at Maggie Walker across all subjects. This is a prime example of where outsourcing is
actually a great idea. In this case, outsourcing the education of your highest achievers, at a cost that is below our average cost per student, where the students are provided with a much wider breadth of
services, is a "no brainer", in good economic times...and even more so in bad.

Four students per year (currently) compete successfully for placement at Maggie Walker, while all the other students in the gifted program are left with far fewer options in Goochland high school. The "Blue Ridge" program in the high school is math and science-based and consists primarily of Honors courses open to all high school students, leaving gifted language arts students with few options to maintain their level of academic interest. GCPS needs either a dedicated gifted program at secondary level, or the availability of more places at Maggie Walker to adequately fulfill the needs of all of these students.

To have a nationally recognized school like Maggie Walker in your back yard is a resource and to not participate sends a message to others that we are not serious about preparing our public school kids at the highest level for success in college, and a globally competitive workforce. Not having a Maggie Walker option, when you are located next to counties that do, will only make Goochland less competitive in attracting families who are serious about their children’s education, and would only serve to devalue property values in the county.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I would now like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, Dena Tremain:


Good evening. My name is Dena Tremain, and I'm the proud parent of three young Goochland
County citizens, all students in our public school system.

We cannot accept the school board’s proposed cuts to middle school athletics. As an educational community, our goal must be to serve every aspect of the whole child. In a recent study that compared athletes and non-athletes, researchers found that “sports helped build character in terms of teamwork, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Athletes learned the principles of self discipline, hard work, and self-confidence.”

We are fortunate in this county to have fine organizations such as GYAA and GUSA for our children. However, nearly 7% of the families in Goochland County live at or below the poverty line. The majority of our impoverished neighbors are African American, accounting for nearly 15 percent. It costs $75 per child for one season of soccer through GUSA. It costs $88 for one season of baseball or softball through GYAA. These costs, unfortunately, put non-school related sports out of reach for many of our already underprivileged children.

According to this proposed county budget, our high school would still offer an athletics program, which I fully support. However, when broken down according to age, the highest poverty rate, thirteen percent, belongs to the youngest children in our school system—those in elementary school. Those children may not have the opportunity to participate in sports before middle school. If we take sports away from them in middle school as well, we are penalizing all of our children, but especially our youngest and poorest—those who don’t have any other options.

Do we know that a child will become a better citizen through the benefit of sports? The research says yes. However, any opportunity lost to a child will never be regained. Any child’s potential not fully realized is a treasure lost to all of us. I believe with my whole heart that each of you loves this county and you want to see it flourish. I know you care about Goochland’s citizens and its future. In fact, all of us in this room ultimately have the same goal—to help our children become educated citizens and responsible leaders. We must begin that process tonight by doing those very things—Support ALL children, the whole child. Keep middle school sports.

http://www.ecanned.com/2007/06/17/income-and-poverty-in-goochland-county-virginia/

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/non-economic-societal-impacts-intercollegiate-athletics

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I would now like to hand over to the next speaker on your list, Karron Myrick:


My name is Karron Myrick and I would like to comment on the Staggered Bus Schedule option for savings. This is a proposal that the community will not be able to support. There are better ideas for savings.

Before I present the argument in more detail I would like to make some overall comments. To start this meeting you recognized the Lego Robotics Teams in this County. These teams are another example of a fabulous educational program that makes Goochland a full service curriculum county. A county that inspires youth to think differently and solve problems. The challenges presented to these kids each year are real world problems requiring research and innovative thinking for a changing world. The teams are judged on real life bench marks. I asked my son if the team meetings get tense and if the final outcome is better. He commented that they disagree but in the end the final outcome is better. He also commented on how different the solutions are. Let’s take the arguments presented throughout this process as the road to a better outcome for the community. Lets work with openness.

Now back to the staggered bus schedule. This is looking at things differently. Unfortunately, this idea is not a good cost saving measure for Goochland. Goochland is a spread out diverse county with many jobs outside the county. This type of change would impact all families for a relatively small projection of on-going savings ($70K in salary and benefits) and the cost deferral will come back and haunt us. This change would significantly harm two job/income and single parent families. It would harm the families that are struggling the most with logistics as it is. Balancing jobs and kids is an almost impossible task under the best of circumstances. Older siblings may be in charge of younger siblings while parents work. This would disrupt so much for so many families in the community. The community is rural and wide spread. The options for after school care programs and activities are less abundant than in larger counties. The impact of this is so widespread that the savings are just not worth it.

Other options to consider relative to transportation are putting gifted kids on middle/high school buses to travel to GCCG, having combined bus stops for a cluster of homes in one area, instead of stopping at every home, putting GES elementary school kids and secondary school kids on the same buses. Perhaps a voluntary fee for service. We need to stop putting staggered schedules on the list and come up with other options.

I believe Jennifer Hefner would now like to speak.


Mr Chairman, members of the Board, Dr. Underwood, my name is Jennifer Hefner, I am the mother of a third grader and will be welcoming a future Goochland student into our family this spring.

While we appreciate that this is a very difficult budget process, for the School Board and the County, many parents would really like to see more open communication and a higher level of parental involvement, such as exists in other counties, between the GCPS school board and parents, so we can work together to find the best possible solution to the budget problems we all face here. A number of GEPA parents would be interested in volunteering to serve on a Parent Advisory Committee, if it would allow us to be more meaningfully involved in this budget process.

Right now, frankly, we are a little frustrated! The school board will not discuss the budget with the public, and the Superintendent will only selectively answer questions on her public blog, which really does not feel like open communication or a full and frank disclosure of information. The school board continues to propose cuts to textbooks, educational programs, teachers and low level clerical staff, despite the express wishes of most parents, leaving us with the impression that our views are not being heard during this process. The abrupt changing of the budget reduction goal from $700,000 to $1.5 million at December 22nd school board meeting just before the holidays, coming only a week after the Superintendent’s public assurances at the December 15th meeting that the proposed budget would only contain $700,000 in cuts, was an unpleasant surprise. And the fact that the public was not even allowed to view the budget figures being discussed at the December 22nd school board meeting only contributed to the atmosphere of suspicion during this difficult period.

When parents asked why minutes of the school board meetings were not available on-line for the public to read in time for the next meeting, we were advised by the Superintendent that the minutes could not be posted until they had been approved by the board at the next meeting. The Freedom of Information Act, section 2.2-3707.1 of the Code of Virginia requires draft minutes of the board’s meetings to be posted on the website as soon as possible, and no later than 10 days after the meeting, but minutes have not been made available.

We call upon the school board to honor your promises to the parents of Goochland county, and to guarantee that the final budget adopted by the school board, will be implemented as written, with no new cuts in programs or teachers introduced once the funds are appropriated from the county. And we urge you to ALWAYS maintain the best interests of the children as your absolute top priority when making the difficult decisions during this challenging budget process.

Please cut budgets, not programs.

Please cut budgets, not teachers.

Please cut budgets, but build the future.