Several Lynchburg City School Board members called the news grim.
Not only is the division facing a likely shortfall of more than $3.7 million in state funding next year, but it’s looking like the board will need to come up with $1.7 million this year, in excess of a million more than previously thought.
These numbers, based on information passed along from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, can and likely will change once Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell takes up the issue in office. Nonetheless, board member Darin Gerdes saw the writing on the wall when it came to the type of cuts that would need to be made.
“I’m going to make the unpopular statement of the evening: We are going to have to cut personnel,” he said, during discussion about this current year’s budget.
Superintendent Paul McKendrick has said that his preference is that personnel not be cut mid-school year, but Gerdes said that personnel salaries make up the majority of regular school operating expenditures and that it may become difficult to squeeze out the rest of the savings needed this year from other sources, such as the textbook fund.
Concerning the 2011-2012 budget, McKendrick said that the division could see a shortfall of between $3.7 million and $5.5 million. City Manager Kimball Payne has asked that each city division prepare a sample budget cutting 10 percent, but McKendrick requested that school board members wait before assuming that will be the template for further discussion.
He said he plans to have a face-to-face discussion with Payne and other city leaders to explain in detail the situation with state funding and ask for more help.
School board members also unanimously passed a capital improvement plan through the year 2015 that includes $1 million in 2011 for Heritage High School, in particular for its roof and its gym.
Last spring, City Council turned down the same request, but McKendrick said a year’s delay has just made the work at Heritage more urgent.
He told board member Regina Dolan-Sewell that if City Council nixed the funds this year like last, he would try to pull together the money for the Heritage High School work by delaying other facilities projects, like paving, if he could.
“At a minimum if we do nothing else, we have to get this done,” McKendrick said. “There’s not a place for a building to have leaks in it and have children in it day after day.”
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