In a unanimous vote Thursday night, the Arlington County School Board adopted its proposed budget for fiscal year 2006, totaling $363,839,611. Yet despite improvements in teacher salaries and increased funding aimed at closing achievement gaps among students, local parents and politicians questioned the board's fiscal restraint.
"As a taxpayer, I face large yearly tax increases, the bulk of it going to fund the public schools, but I do not see a corresponding increase in the quality of our education," said William Barker, an independent candidate for Elaine Furlow's seat in the coming election.
Barker pointed out that the yearly costs associated with each student in Arlington schools comes to about $16,000, an estimate confirmed by a look at the budget itself. This price tag means Arlington ranks thirteenth in the nation when it comes to school spending per student, according to the Education Intelligence Agency, a non-profit, conservative research group. Barker's campaign has focused much energy on school spending. He said this latest budget lacks measures to enhance the accountability of academic programs.
"What I did not see in the budget are efforts to evaluate school programs on how well they are achieving their goals," said Barker. "Holding each program accountable is the only way to
determine which ones are successful and which ones are not. Throwing money at an unsuccessful program is not going to necessarily turn it around. We can achieve much more value by expanding successful programs such as HB Woodlawn, Science Focus, and Arlington Traditional School and eliminating programs that are not producing results."
BUT IT WAS what's being cut that has Cecelia Espenoza, independent school board candidate and president of Claremont Immersion Elementary School's PTA concerned. Espenoza said the additional $2 million in county funding from the sale of general obligation bonds to Morgan Stanley Thursday "means they'll have enough that they don't have to address the really tough questions."
Had the bail out come any later, she said, the board might have been forced to reconsider raising teacher salaries and the 3 percent cost of living adjustment made for all other employees in the school system. Espenoza said she was disappointed with a cut of $49,000 to support summer schools and the board's cut of the Latino Youth Leadership Conference, a new annual program that exposes Latino students to potential career paths and introduces them to successful Latino leaders in the community. In light of the fact that the board saw fit to keep the $55,000 in funding to conduct a customer satisfaction survey, she said the board had erred in choosing what to cut and where.
"It was a mistake to cut direct services to children," said Espenoza.
The board also approved $50,000 to fund a study of its retirement policies.
"I can appreciate the retirement survey but the satisfaction survey, that same amount of money could have helped a lot of students in summer programs and we could have kept the conference," said Espenoza.
She was also critical of cuts in additional funding to the Gifted and Talented but the real fiscal challenge the board faces with the new budget, she said, are the anticipated cost overruns stemming from its construction projects at Washington-Lee High and other schools.
"That's going to be the biggest challenge to the school system," Espenoza said.
As of the Connection's press time, Democratic candidate Ed Fendley, who won his party's endorsement Saturday, could not be reached for comment.
AT A BUDGET WORK session Clarence Stukes, assistant superintendent of facilities and operations revealed that the estimated cost of Washington-Lee's new building has risen by about $12.4 million from its initial price of $72.7 million. But school district officials said the rising estimate is not set in stone.
"We don't have a contract yet," said Susan Robinson, assistant superintendent of finance. "We haven't gone out for bids."
Robinson attributed the rising price tag to the climbing cost of building materials on the international market.
"It's steel, it's concrete. it's asphalt," she said. "That is all getting more expensive."
The new estimate, she added, could be raised again depending on those conditions.
A total of $290,039,337 in the district's adopted budget comes from a transfer of funds from the county government.
The budget also includes $265,600 for three new pre-school classes, two through the Virginia Preschool Initiative and one new Montessori program. More than $300,000 is also being allocated to keep teachers in reading programs once paid for by federal Title I funding. The Gifted and Talented program wil recieve $15,000 in additional funding, less than proposed. About $47,000 will be used to provide one assistant in every Kindergarten class with 16 students or more.