When Budget Cuts Run Into the Millions

With local school boards facing budget shortfalls in the realm of several million dollars for the next school year, they will have to take big steps to make up the losses. The state has put them in that position because the dwindling economy has created budgetary shortfalls reaching into the billions of dollars.

Campbell County, which is facing one of the largest deficits in terms of state money in the region, has proposed some big steps to bring the school budget in line with the reduced state aid. But closing two schools is not a popular decision.

The School Board found that out at a public hearing last week.
School Superintendent Robert Johnson has proposed that the county close Gladys Elementary School and the Fray Educational Center, the county’s alternative school. He is trying to make up a deficit of nearly $8 million based on the budget submitted by former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. Depending on the outcome of the state budget deliberations now before a conference committee at the General Assembly, that deficit could grow by as much as another $1.5 million.

As is the case in many rural towns and villages, the elementary school is the hub of that community. And that’s the case with Gladys Elementary, located off U.S. 501 south of Rustburg. The student body of the small school could be absorbed by other elementary schools in the county, but that would still leave a void in the life of Gladys.

That was part of the message that some 130 residents took to the School Board’s public hearing in an effort to save the school. One resident with a child at Gladys Elementary said she had a petition signed by 1,500 people to keep the school open.

Other speakers, several of whom did not have children in the school, said they worried closing the school could devastate the small community. Grace Farmer said she had heard that several residents will leave the community if the school closes. “Everyone involved in the south end (of the county) will suffer,” she said.

But the state has left the county little choice other than to close the school. When the School Board has to consider cuts in the millions of dollars, that’s an area it has to consider. Raising taxes to meet local needs has never been part of the solution to the state financial crisis.

The future for Fray may be a bit brighter. Two speakers came to its support, including one former student who said the school helped turn his life around. “They taught me to grow up and be a better man,” said Faevion Marshall, who will soon begin college at Universal Technical Institute in North Carolina.

Superintendent Johnson said County Administrator David Laurrell asked him to prepare an estimate of a bare-bones budget for the school, which Laurrell believes is important to the overall well-being of the county. Johnson said he could run the school on about $500,000 a year, about half of its current cost.

That would mean eliminating 10 full-time positions and transportation to and from the school. It would also mean removing the sixth and seventh grades from the school, which now serves grades six through 12.

The cuts at Fray, if it survives, are indicative of what school systems throughout the region are facing as they scrape for every last dime in their budgets to keep schools and educational programs in place.

In some cases, marginal programs will be eliminated, which will amount to a true and justified savings. In others, however, cuts will have to be made that no one is comfortable with. The closing of Gladys Elementary School may fall into that latter category.