Seventy-nine students, parents and community members paraded before the Fairfax County School Board Monday night, the first of two scheduled public hearings, to plead their cases for particular programs, offer ideas on other cost-cutting measures or to volunteer their services in lobbying Richmond next year for more state education funding.
Next week, the board will have to cut $36.3 million, down from $47 million, from its proposed $1.6 billion FY 2003 budget. This year, the school system received $47 million less in state aid than projected, but recently was able to narrow the gap $10.8 million by reducing 78.5 positions, based on revised enrollment figures; renegotiating bus-lease agreements; eliminating SOL teacher training since the state withdrew its funding; and an increase in federal IDEA [Individuals With Disabilities Education Act] funding.
Below is a sample of what the board heard:
* Emily Sasek with Taylor Blake, sophomores at Westfield High School: "Taylor and I are among the first students in the United States to be inducted into the National Spanish Honor Society as freshman. This is a direct result of our continuing our language program through middle school."
* Robert Weaver, junior, Falls Church High School: "The planetarium is one of many important parts of my life at Falls Church. We go to the planetarium and receive valuable instruction on how to locate and identify constellations, star clusters, planets and more. … Most students that have had a chance to visit the planetarium have left with a growing curiosity for how the world works and for how everything fits together in the big picture."
* Cadet Master Chief Petty Officer Jonathan Batt, Herndon High School: "The JROTC program has greatly changed me personally. I used to be somewhat shy and soft-spoken, the JROTC program not only taught me to be more outgoing, it also gave me a great deal of confidence. The JROTC has taught me the leadership qualities I know now."
* Meg Pickering, parent: "I speak tonight to support several of the School Board's proposed changes. In particular, I think the School Board's proposal not to increase class size is the single most important step it could take to help each and every teacher in the system do a better job."
* Iliana Sanchez, seventh grader, Walt Whitman Middle School: "I want to go to college. I have had a chance to learn how to write two research papers this year. First, in English class and later in social studies class. Both times we could not check out the library books. When we were doing our research papers, there were not enough books for all 470 seventh graders to check out and actually take them home."
* Marianne Blumenthal Grabenstetter, Sully District representative to the Gifted and Talented Advisory Committee: "Your wisdom in retaining third grade in the Gifted and Talented Centers is commendable. Eliminating services to these vulnerable children has been a rallying cry in the media and among parent groups who consider disadvantaging the advantaged to be politically correct."
* Richard Baumgartner, Fairfax Education Association, president: "On behalf of school employees, I vehemently protest the proposal to under fund the school board contribution to ERFC. … Unlike a proposed program cut, the savings from under funding ERFC must be made up in the next budget cycle, thereby creating an unfunded liability."
* Judy Johnson, Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, president: "Is state funding a problem? Over the past four years, from 1998 to 2002, state funding for Fairfax County schools increased by 40 percent. In those four years, every other Northern Virginia school system has given higher raises to teachers than Fairfax County."
* Michael Waters, Mount Vernon High School PTSA, president: "I must confess when I first looked at the proposed budget cuts the first thing I thought was that the board was targeting every south county high school. Maybe it just seems that way because the impact of these proposed reductions would have a significant, if not tragic, effect on many Mount Vernon High School students and other students in the south county area."
* Dick Reed, parent: "You've been presented with a list of potential cuts that would do this, and included among them are cuts to a number of relatively small programs that would yield commensurately small savings. But let me be clear, the effects of those small cuts on our students would be huge. And this is especially true when you consider that the same dollars can be had with no effect whatsoever to those same students. How? By increasing class size by just .5 students, for a savings of $7 million. You know as plainly as you can see your hand in front of your face that small incremental increases and decreases in class size simply have virtually no effect on students."
* Robert Harris, conflict resolution specialist, retiring this year: "These programs [conflict resolution/peer mediation] are important because they teach crucial skills to over 12,500 students per year who in turn, formally and informally assist other students to resolve their conflicts nonviolently."
* Jeanne Dolenc: "Board of Education you need look no further for spare funds than to the International Baccalaureate Program. … IB hurts kids, check the numbers from the South Lakes class of 2002 attending their first and second choice colleges, compared to students from past years at that high school."