At a special called meeting Tuesday, the Stafford School Board approved an amended $525.9 million operating budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Superintendent Daniel Smith told the board that division staff have been working “24/7” since June 22, when the General Assembly approved the state budget, to prepare an amended budget for the school division.
The division’s budget includes $8.8 million in additional state funding. As a result, staff proposed — and the board agreed — to reduce the local funding request from the Board of Supervisors by $1.3 million.
School Board members on Tuesday said this is an acknowledgment of how hard supervisors worked this budget season to be able to fund the division, specifically its request to provide 4.75% raises to staff.
Some of the additional $8.8 million has been designated by the state for specific purposes. Just under $2.5 million is earmarked for special education; $250,994 for at-risk programs, and $1.92 million for one-time funding.
Smith said the $2.5 million earmarked for special education funding will allow the division to focus on supporting “our lowest achieving student group.”
Special education students are performing “below the state average across all areas,” Smith said. “One of the things we’ve focused a lot on is compliance, but we need to focus on the instruction side as well.”
He proposed using the new special education funding to hire 16 new teachers. Eight of these positions would be at the elementary level; adding them would reduce the elementary special education case load from 20:1 to 15:1, which would achieve the School Board’s staffing standards.
The other eight would be placed at elementary, middle, and high schools that have been identified as requiring extra support for special education based on compliance concerns, achievement results, staff vacancies, and the number of provisionally licensed and new staff members, Smith said.
The additional special education funding also allows the division to create four part-time diagnostician positions and one central office position to support the ballooning number of 504 plans. These plans provide support to students with disabilities so that they can learn in general education classes alongside their peers. They differ from individualized education plans in that they do not provide specialized instruction.
“If we go back to 2016, we had about 800 [504 plans],” Smith said. “That has exploded over 150% since that time. Now, we’re at 2,186. This is an unfunded mandate. It does require eligibility, development of the plan, communication with teachers, continual monitoring, and at minimum an annual review.”
Currently, Smith said, the division’s special education diagnosticians are supporting both IEP and 504 plans.
“One of the things we see in special education in general is that many of our folks get burned out,” Smith said. “We hope to bring in more staff to help with the workload.”
Staff propose using the additional $1.9 million in one-time funding to tackle capital maintenance and transportation needs, including $332,000 for five new buses.
The additional $4.15 million in unrestricted funds will go towards hiring 10 new full time paraprofessionals and four new high school counselors, bringing the counselor-to-student ratio from 300:1 to 275:1.
School Board members Patricia Healy (Rock Hill) and Sarah Chase (Falmouth) didn’t support the proposed amended budget on Tuesday.
Healy said she wasn’t willing to support a budget that is greater than the one initially presented to supervisors in the spring. And Chase said she has concerns about hiring new staff when the division saw 800 fewer students enroll this past year than what had been projected.
In a press release following the budget approval, School Board Chair Elizabeth Warner(Griffis-Widewater) said in a press release that the board “is committed to being responsible stewards of the public’s investment in education.”
“When additional state funding became available, we took the opportunity to restore critical investments that support our students and staff while reducing our request to the county,” she continued. “While we continue to have many unmet needs, we also recognize the fiscal challenges facing the Board of Supervisors. This action reflects our commitment to collaboration, accountability, and ensuring every public dollar is used wisely.”
