Supervisors Emphasizing Teachers?

Something has been puzzling me this week. Members of the Board of Supervisors have repeatedly berated the School Board and Superintendent for proposing to cut personnel, and for spending money on classroom technology. Please note that there's no new classroom technology in this year's budget, there wasn't any in last year's budget. Yes, I'm talking about whiteboards.

I chafe a little when I hear the criticism of technology in the classroom. (Okay, more than a little). But I'm not going to debate whiteboards today. As I said, they aren't in the budget, though some Supervisors are still using them as justification to cut the budget.

So with that in mind, consider the first vote last week that the Supervisors used to cut into the money that the state sent to Loudoun to be spent on education. It was a vote to cut $5.5 Million dollars specifically to pressure the School Board to eliminate the 1% cost of living increase for all LCPS employees. It was a unanimous vote.

I'm sorry, what was that you were saying about how important the teachers are?

Supervisors Vote Against Raises for School Employees (Loudoun Times Mirror)
Supervisors Cut Money Earmarked for Teacher Raises (Loudoun Independent)
Loudoun Next to Last in Teacher Salaries (Our Loudoun Schools)

Supervisors Pull Budget Bait and Switch

Earlier this year I wrote about the Board of Supervisors, business community, Loudoun's state legislators and the School Board working together to restore proposed state funding cuts to Loudoun's education budget. We worked together and were successful. Where the School Board conformed to the Supervisor's October directive to ask for a $25M budget increase (actually a per-pupil decrease), the state more than made up for it with a $25.4 million funding increase and a $20M reduction in required retirement contributions.

You might think that the increase in state education aid would prompt the School Board to increase its budget request even further, but we had pledged not to do that if this situation arose. We pledged to work within the original limits we proposed and return the rest to the taxpayers. Instead the Supervisors have gone even further, cutting the school budget below last year's level. The Board of Supervisors voted to take away the state aid, and then cut the school budget even more deeply. They have nullified the state's budget increase, and then cut even more deeply than that.

Supervisors Cut $30M from School Budget (Leesburg Today)
Supervisors Vote Against Raises for School Employees (Loudoun Times Mirror)
Supervisors Cut Money Earmarked for Teacher Raises (Loudoun Independent)

Why is being next to last in per-pupil funding not enough? Why is being next to last in teacher salaries not enough? Why is having some of the largest class sizes in the state not enough? Why was proposing a budget within the limits that the Supervisors provided not enough? Why was joining together to fight for more state funding not enough?

The School Board cut per-pupil spending, offset increases with cuts and stayed within the limits the Supervisors laid down. We fought for more funding from the state but didn't ask to keep any of it for the schools beyond our original request.

The Supervisors have one more budget work session, tonight at 6:30pm. Consider what the School Board may need to cut to meet this proposed budget. And tell the Board of Supervisors what you think of this bait and switch today, before it is too late.

Baking Loudoun's Budget Cake

[Leesburg Today]

Loudoun County Teen Girls Night Out

Girls Night Out is coming up on Saturday March 13, 2010. It is hosted at Dominion High School and runs from 3-9PM.

Girls Night Out Flyer
Girls Night Out Program

The event is geared to promote safety and awareness amongst teenage girls throughout Loudoun County. It will feature presentations on self defense, fashion and style, internet safety, gang awareness and career opportunities. Special guest speakers are Mrs. Beth Holloway and Mr. Ben Atherton-Zeman.

Dinner is provided with admission and all girls will receive gift bags and opportunities for special prizes provided by our sponsors.

To register, visit www.loudoun.gov/webtrac and register for activity number 303403-01.
Girls can also take a brief online survey.

Quantifying Great Teachers?

I'm reading an interesting report today, about a study of how great teachers help their students achieve:

Right away, certain patterns emerged. First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.

Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Online Petition for the LCPS Budget

The Loudoun Education Association has created an online petition in support of the LCPS budget. Signers only need provide name, the city and state in which they reside and a personal email address. Signers are also asked to choose from a list of options to indicate any affiliation they have with LCPS.

LCPS Budget Petition

FY11 Budget Final Stretch

Everything before today was just the warm-up. Now the real budget process starts. Having listened to the presentations and the speakers, read the documents and asked the questions, the Board of Supervisors begins to decide Loudoun's future... taxes, libraries, deputies, roads, courts, family services and of course... schools.

The School Board has asked for an budget increase of $32.1M, almost exactly the cost of increased enrollment ($21.7M) and increased non-discretionary costs ($10.1M). We approved some expenditure increases but offset them with other cuts. There was a small increase in state funding, a small decrease in federal funding and a larger decrease in expenses required by the state. It all added up to a need for an increase of $25.1M from local taxes (the same percentage increase as was proposed for the rest of the County government).

On Tuesday the Supervisors and the School Board met for about three hours to discuss the school budget. At the beginning of the meeting we received a budget update, and the outlook is much better than we anticipated even just a month ago. Let me give you a picture of what this means for schools.

This chart shows the $1.3M increase in education funding originally proposed by the state as a result of the LCI freeze. It shows the $25.1M requested by the School Board in local funding to make up for the loss of state funds that the freeze would have meant, and it shows the combined state revenue increases and expenditure decreases proposed by the Virginia House and Senate, respectively.

The House proposes an increase of $17M in state aid for education to Loudoun, the Senate proposes an increase of $25M. In addition, the House and Senate both propose a change in retirement account contributions that would save Loudoun $20M in expenditures. In all, the House version would save Loudoun approximately $37M and the Senate version would save $45M.

The bottom line is that if either the House or Senate versions are agreed upon, or something in between, Loudoun will receive an increase in education funding from the state greater than the School Board's request for a local funding increase.

Translation: The school budget could be fully funded without increasing taxes locally.

It's important not to get too fixated on the state revenue numbers at this stage. They are not final but they are the best indicators we have of where we'll wind up, and we're very pleased to see them.