SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. — After an almost eight-hour meeting, the Spotsylvania County School Board voted 4-3 to approve its more than $440 million budget.
The meeting ended just after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, after a long and contentious night that pit school leader against school leader. Despite Superintendent Mark Taylor proposing to cut all school libraries to prevent a major budget shortfall, the recommended revision of the budget adoption steers clear of the controversial item.
Under this new budget, the board cut 11 special education aides and five elementary para educators, all of the full-time custodial staff, and eight school support positions.
The approved budget also scrapped plans to buy updated textbooks and changes to some curriculums. Certain positions will now be paid bi-weekly as opposed to once a month but does not include a pay raise.
Some board members were not happy about cutting teachers assistants and would rather see some high paying positions cut instead including chief-of-staff.
To help save money, the board approved of eliminating academic and athletic stipends of $467,000. After adding the cuts, the board wound up with an $8,000 surplus.
The school administration said the approved budget is provisional since it could still receive more money from the state.
"It's hard to be 100% confident in where we are right now because it is a provisional budget," teacher Melissa Brace said. "My fears are that the cuts that we managed to avoid last night could be in the future if we get less money from the state."
Taylor first announced a budget shortfall of $21.85 million. He asked the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors for $19 million in local revenue by increasing the tax rate, but only received $10.9 million to help close the gap.
However, a preview of the school board budget work session presentation showed the total gap in funding is now at $16.36 million instead.
In an earlier board meeting, Taylor said there would be possible major budget cuts including cutting all school libraries and their 63 employees and 60 teachers and increasing health insurance costs to employees from 2% to 7%.
“If libraries were to be eliminated, it would be destruction,” said Spotsylvania Co. School librarian Dorathy Winkler. “How did we get to this point? How are these things happening in the 21st century? How are taking steps backwards?”
The new school administration recommendations to the budget do not reflect getting rid of libraries, but positions are still affected. The school administration stressed the proposals serve as a starting point to help balance the budget.
Other recommendations would reduce $17,900 in funding for safety and security needs such as uniforms.
The proposed revisions also removed updated AP textbooks of $53,000 and new Science of Reading books of $1.4 million, and changes to the middle school English and Science curriculum of $1.2 million.
Critics of Taylor question if his earlier announcement was politically motivated.
No matter the outcome, Winkler stressed healing needs to take place. Taylor has also been criticized after deciding to pull out 14 books from the school libraries.
“We've got a lot of work to do,” Winkler said. “Librarians are not the bad guys, we're the good guys.”
The school board previously approved to increase salary for contracted employees by 5%, which equals close to $13 million.