Tough time for teachers: Nearly 300 jobs cut from area school budgets

Budget cuts are likely to tighten the market for public education jobs in the Lynchburg area. School budgets awaiting council or supervisor board approval in Lynchburg and Campbell, Bedford, Amherst and Appomattox counties contain a combined total of nearly 300positions cut.

That wouldn’t mean a layoff in every case, but it would mean fewer slots to be filled.

“It’s clearly going to be tougher both for the professional coming out of educational school and people (who have been laid off)looking for work in adjoining school systems,” said Lanny Lambdin, Central Virginia Uniserv Director for the Virginia Education Association. “It’s not a good time to be looking for a teaching job.”

Lambdin also said that he believes lobbying efforts at the state level helped keep cuts in the Lynchburg area from being less than worst-case scenarios.

Beth Ackerman, Liberty University’s Associate Dean of Education, said that this year the University’s education jobs recruiting event was dominated by Christian schools around the United States and other countries. Previously, she said, more local area school divisions came to the event; this year she thinks some local school divisions that had come in the past did not show up.

Ackerman said that the students she advises have had options for teaching jobs, even if those options aren’t in area public schools. For example, more Liberty University education students are staying to get a masters degree and taking graduate teaching positions with the university.

The Campbell County School Board’s budget contains the most cuts of any division in the region: 89 teaching positions, 27 classified positions, a full-time administrator and five part-time administrators.

The 89 teaching positions to be cut include 17 resulting from the closure of Gladys Elementary School and scaling back of the Fray Educational Center, plus another 72 throughout the division, Superintendent Robert Johnson clarified during a presentation to county supervisors this week.

The school board’s budget also cuts the budget for substitute teachers and suspends the 20/20 program, which provided work for retired school personnel.

In comparison, the Lynchburg schools budget cuts roughly 65 full-time positions, including about 30 teachers. Bedford County’s school budget cuts 62 positions and Amherst’s cuts about 38. In Appomattox, the division plans not to fill at least eight positions vacated by retirements or resignations. In Nelson County, school board members did not cut the schools’ budget and are asking the county government to make up the schools’ projected $850,000 loss in revenue.

Of area school divisions, Bedford has the most students, followed by Lynchburg, Appomattox and Nelson. Campbell and Lynchburg have similar student enrollments: about 8,216 in Campbell and 8,263 in Lynchburg this year. Campbell County’s school budget would decrease by about $7.8 million, or 9.74 percent, from this year. Lynchburg’s school budget would decrease by about 8.7 million, or 10.11 percent.

Campbell County, is however, the area school division most reliant on state funding, more so than Lynchburg, Bedford County, Amherst County, Appomattox or Nelson. Its composite index, which measures the state’s estimate of a locality’s fair share of funding for schools, was the lowest in the region for 2008-2010 and will remain so for 2010-2012. Campbell County also had the lowest per-pupil expenditures of any of those divisions, according to a regional comparison chart provided to the Lynchburg City Council by Lynchburg Superintendent Paul McKendrick.

This year, the Campbell County school board and superintendent are asking Campbell County to kick in $1.5 million from county savings, to which the school division has contributed in the past.

“We aren’t like lots of divisions that have lots of flashy programs and things that cost money,” Johnson said, later adding. “We depend highly on the state; when the state hurts, we hurt.”