Faced with an unbalanced budget and up to $23.8 million in spending cuts, the Richmond School Board looked to the public for guidance.
Five people showed up to speak at a public hearing Monday night on the budget for Richmond Public Schools that takes effect July 1.
Three were Richmond schoolteachers who urged restraint in cuts to employee pay and benefits, and two were community activists who rebuked the school system for its failures but did not address the underlying budget concerns.
The School Board now has just 10 days to reconcile a budget with revenues of $239.9 million and spending obligations of $263.7 million.
For Charlotte Hayer, a teacher at Armstrong High School and vice president of the Richmond Education Association, the options offered by Superintendent Yvonne W. Brandon pile woe upon woe: health insurance increases shifted to employees, up to three unpaid furlough days, a shorter annual contract and then a 2 percent pay cut.
"Why should I come to work?" Hayer asked. "All of these things decrease my pay. I haven't had a raise in more than five years."
But those concerns got little sympathy from Teddy Parham, a community activist and Richmond school graduate who said teachers now care more about their salaries than their students.
"You all want benefits and raises, but you have to earn it," Parham said. "If the children are failing, that makes you a failure."
The board is hoping for relief from the General Assembly, such as:
- phasing in increases in teacher pension contributions, which add more than $8.2 million in cost to the next budget, and group life insurance premiums, which add $1.5 million;
- a process to appeal a new state method of distributing sales tax revenue that otherwise will cost the school system $3 million next year;
- restoring "hold harmless" money that the legislature used in the past two years to protect Richmond and other school districts from a shift in state funding formula; and
- flexibility in the state limit on class sizes in kindergarten through third grades.
Increasing class size is one option Brandon suggested to eliminate 138 teaching positions and save more than $2.6 million.
But Lola McDowell, a kindergarten teacher at Woodville Elementary School, implored the board not to increase class sizes in the lower grades.
"The little children need small class sizes," McDowell said.
REA President Angela Dews warned against the consequences of other suggested options to cut spending — up to 100 layoffs, requiring employees to pay increased health insurance premiums, outsourcing work by custodians and transportation workers, and reducing professional contracts for teachers but not principals.
"These benefits have been part of the RPS employee package for a long time," Dews said. "They have kept RPS competitive."
"What you have submitted doesn't come close to meeting the level of student need," she said.
But the budget presented by Brandon on Jan. 17 also doesn't come close to balancing, and it includes $1.5 million for a salary bonus for employees.
The board will have to approve a budget Feb. 16 for submission to Mayor Dwight C. Jones, who will incorporate it into a city budget that he will introduce March 6.
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