Chesterfield schools could lose 525 jobs
Published: January 28, 2009
The Chesterfield County school system is proposing to eliminate more than 500 positions, funding for Advanced Placement testing and its elementary International Baccalaureate program to make up for a $52 million budget shortfall.
"To say that this is the most difficult budget process I have overseen as a superintendent would be a dramatic understatement," Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome said yesterday at a news conference.
School and department budgets will be reduced by 20 percent, and the expansion of foreign languages at elementary schools would be delayed. Also, employees would be required to take two days off without pay and would not receive raises.
Newsome announced the massive cuts in a presentation of the proposed $551.5 million 2009-10 budget to the School Board last night. The school system expects to lose $52 million in state and county revenue.
The 525 positions proposed for elimination include administrators, teachers and instructional aides. One hundred and eleven classroom teaching positions are included in that number.
Newsome said about half of the 525 positions would be eliminated by attrition and by not filling open positions. He said he has asked school principals to submit their staffing needs based on student enrollment.
Principals informed their staffs yesterday that the positions of dean on the high school level and administrative assistant on the middle school level -- a total of 30 jobs -- would be eliminated. A high school dean of students is an administrator one level under an assistant principal. The employees will have a chance to apply for other positions, he said.
Also in Newsome's budget proposal:
"Most initiatives that were implemented for the last three years have been eliminated," Newsome said. "I think that some of these programs that are being eliminated may never be restored."
Meredith Ford, a parent of two children, said as she walked into the meeting that she was worried about the effect in the classroom.
"They're cutting special-education teachers," she said. "Both of my kids are in special education. That's a biggie for me."
Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or
.
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Reader Reactions
I had lunch with my child TODAY. The point is the door is opened 100’s and 100’s times a day and no vestibule is in place. All the heat and in the Summer all the air condition air is just being wasted. We can reduce the heating cost if we installed a vestibule…. like what the YMCA did in Shady Grove. It saves them money…
Ron: When was the last time you were actually in a school? Every school in my district (and 3 out of the other local districts I’ve worked for) has their doors locked at all times and people must be buzzed in to be admitted. That is a far cry from the “doors of the school… always open”. Remember Columbine? That kind of put an end to open doors in schools. I think you speak out of ignorance.
Both you and Ms. Fedup have your minds made up as to what you think the real problem is, regardless of whether or not there are facts to support it, so I guess you can return to patting each other on the backs every other post.
I’m working here in the trenches and am here to tell you that your guile is misplaced. If you took a survey of people who actually have an informed idea of what’s wrong with school budgeting, you’d likely find amount of money spent on illegal immigrants near the bottom of the list.
Didn’t one just get convicted of killing two legal residents? On a side note… Now many Illegal’s have gotten a mortgage that now they can’t afford? To equal it out and people who are legal got a mortgage they cannot afford… It goes both ways… now I find this…. so I think we should all join forces and call our Mortgage companies and tell them we are not going to pay so we can also get help. Is it fair that the people like you and me continue to be law abiding citizens and READ AND UNDERSTAND what a Mortgage contract is and now I find out this is going to happen… Are we really this stupid?
Dear Congressman Cantor:
Why should hard working people who pay their bills have to put up with this nonsence!!
Maybe we should not pay our Mortgage for the next two months also to get help.
I mean…if people who should have never gotten a loan… and or might be here Illegally
and who have used our system get a break…
Then its about time we get one two..
Why should we not pay our mortgage just to get help.
I have been using my 401K to make it….. and these people are getting help!!!
Come on…. How long do you think we can take this….??
Mr. Dolbow.. you know what kind of person I am…. is this fair..?
Fed moves to help distressed homeowners
Borrowers must be at least 60 days delinquent to qualify for help
updated 11:40 a.m. ET Jan. 28, 2009
WASHINGTON - With foreclosures spiking, the Federal Reserve is taking steps to try to keep some distressed borrowers in their homes.
Under the program, the Fed has a number of options to provide relief, including lowering the amount the homeowner owes on the mortgage, reducing the interest rate or lengthening the term of the loan.
It’s unclear how many homeowners would benefit. However, the relief plan would apply to the billions of dollars of mortgage assets the Fed is holding on its books because of last year’s bailouts of Bear Stearns and insurer American International Group.
In general, a borrower must be at least 60 days delinquent to qualify for help, although the Fed has leeway to make some exceptions. A 2008 law that set up the $700 billion bailout fund instructed the Fed to take such foreclosure relief action.
“The goal of the policy is to avoid preventable foreclosures on residential mortgage assets that are held, owned or controlled by a Federal Reserve Bank,“ Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote in a letter Tuesday to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Bernanke has repeatedly urged Congress and — more recently — the administration of President Barack Obama to ramp up efforts to curb home foreclosures, which are aggravating the economy’s problems. The new administration is examining ways to stem foreclosures.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, welcomed the Fed’s program and called it “an important advance.“
The Fed’s Bear Stearns’ portfolio is valued at $27 billion, although the central bank doesn’t say how much of that is in home mortgages. The Fed’s AIG assets include one portfolio valued at nearly $20 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities and a second portfolio valued at nearly $27 billion of collateralized debt obligations, which are complex financial instruments that combine various slices of debt.
More than 2.3 million homeowners faced foreclosure proceedings last year, a whopping 81 percent increase from 2007. And more than 860,000 properties nationwide were actually repossessed by lenders last year, more than double the 2007 level, according to RealtyTrac, a California-based foreclosure listing firm. Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California had the highest foreclosure rates last year.
Housing, credit and financial crises — the worst since the 1930s_ have plunged the country into a recession, now in its second year. So far, a slew of radical government programs have failed to remedy the problems.
In reply to Ron Melancon ) Illegals also use our roads they don’t help to fix because they don’t pay taxes, they don’t have valid drivers licenses or registration or insurance…and cause way too many hit and run accidents for us to pay for as well, they get free benefits and send their earnings which add up to billions of dollars to their home land in the form of remittances….and why are our states going bankrupt???
Who said that Illegals are the biggest problem? The facts are what they are. These people live in homes.. they have more than one family living in these homes. They have lots of kids.. they can afford them because they get paid off the books or have fake social security numbers. The point is we are a nation of laws…. and we respect the law. These people are breaking the law and we are paying for it. Now the issue… we are teaching children to pass the test… we give every child a trophy… we don’t mark in red anymore… we try to equalize the whole class.. because if one student is doing great.. we need to bring him down to go with the rest of the class. The waste…Here is one… the doors of the school… they are always open.. cold air just goes through the building and enters the school… we pay for that heat loss. The YMCA has a automatic door and a vestibule in Shady Grove. It has saved them tons of money because the cold air does not go through the building it is kept in the vestibule. Why can’t these doors be installed in our Schools?
Comparison between our top federal jobs and the Chesterfield top 100 salaries.
President Obama 400,000
Vice President Biden 208,100
Senators & Representatives 162,100
Speaker of the House 208,100
Chief Justice Supreme Court 208,100
Does anyone really believe that the workers in the school administration are on the same level yet they draw as much or more than those who we entrust to run the country.
With all due respect Marcus Newsome is not worth more than Joe Biden and the various assistant Supt’s. are not worth more than our Senators and Representatives. Something is way out of proportion with Chesterfields salary ranges.
Chesterfield should immediately cut the salaries of those making over $100K by 40 percent and those $75 to $100K by 25 percent. In addition those making over $100K should be required to pay at least 25 percent of their retirement and health benefits. This would get salaries more in line. There is way too much gap between the top and the teachers who need and deserve more pay. Staffing levels in the central administration should also be reduced. Combine positions and have strict accountability for the amount of work produced by each employee.
The “root” of the problem is GREED, and it comes from all sides, including the government, employers that hire illegals and criminals (illegal included)....all preying on the honest, taxpaying American Citizen.
Illegal immigrants are an easy scapegoat for the xenophobes, but they really are not at the root of the problem.
No they are not the root of the problem. The 14 million in salaries alone for the top 150 employees on the school payroll are the root of the problem. Too many, overpaid, underworked and unaccountable to the citizens who pay their outrageous salaries.
This 14 million would go a long way in direct education for our children instead of lining unproductive pockets of people sponging off working taxpayers.
Go to this website. Take a look at what we are having to pay these people. There is no earthly reason that the salaries are this high for what we get. Chesterfield County Schools have become a bureaucracy that’s out of control. Except for the principals on this list the rest have no justification whatever for the salaries they are paid by hard working taxpayers and homeowners who see nothing but ever increasing taxes to fuel it.
http://www.chesterfieldobserver.com/COMMON/Salaries_07/Chesterfield_School.htm
To all of you who work outside of the education field:
It’s interesting how many of you attribute the budget shortfalls to the illegal immigrant community. Hate to burst your bubbles, but that is far, far from a significant expenditure of school funding. The enemy here comes from within. Illegal immigrants are an easy scapegoat for the xenophobes, but they really are not at the root of the problem.
All localities will take a budget hit. Chesterfield will get hit worse than most - probably in part because they have more school-age kids per house than just about any other school system and partly because they rely more heavily on residential real estate taxes than localities such as Richmond and Henrico.
Chesterfield continues to suffer because of the imbalance between residential and commercial growth. Henrico gets the tax revenue from the folks working at Innsbrook, using the example from the poster below, but Chesterfield gets the bill for educating the kids. It’s a formula that guarantees budget stress and higher taxes.
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