What impact will the new state budget have on local schools?

Virginia’s $70 billion two-year budget, approved Sunday, calls for $253 million in cuts to public education — less than the House of Delegates sought but more than the Senate called for.

For weeks, school officials have pondered a number of questions:

How many jobs will be cut under each scenario?

Will we have to close a school? Two schools?

What will the real impact on education be?

Now that the numbers are in, here’s what school officials in Central Virginia localities are saying.

Lynchburg

Lynchburg City Schools Superintendent Paul McKendrick said he’s now looking at $8.7 million in cuts. That’s less than McKendrick’s working number from last week of approximately $10 million and the worst-case scenario of $17.8 million.

McKendrick said he will still be working this morning to find more cuts.

“It’s better in the sense that we aren’t $4 million off,” McKendrick said of the current situation for his budget team.

The superintendent is expected to unveil his formal budget proposals to the Lynchburg School Board during a meeting at 5:30 p.m. today.

Bedford

Bedford County Schools’ Superintendent Douglas Schuch said the division is “certainly encouraged by what we’re seeing, especially in the first year of the biennium” in regard to the state budget.

Schuch’s initial recommendation made Feb. 11 — which he later termed a “worst-case scenario” — called for eliminating more than 120 positions and closing schools in Thaxton and Body Camp to help ease the blow of a projected $7 million shortfall.

Schuch stopped short Monday of saying what measures in his initial recommendation may be off the table, saying he didn’t “want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

“It’s certainly a much more promising picture than what we had (in Gov. McDonnell’s budget proposal),” Schuch said.

Campbell

School Superintendent Robert Johnson said Monday he was relieved that state lawmakers had come to a decision.

“I was really concerned it would carry over for weeks,” he said.

Johnson is waiting for detailed information from the state as he works to help school board members prepare to put together a budget on March 29.

Amherst

“The budget outlook is improved since the finalized budget is closer to the Senate” version rather than the House version, said Brian Ratliff, the Amherst County Public Schools superintendent.

Ratliff said if he receives more specific information from the Virginia Department of Education in the next couple of days, he will modify his recommendations for the second tier of proposed cuts, which include 14 instructional assistants, eight part-time secretaries and a small number other instructional positions that will go unfilled.

Ratliff had prepared budget scenarios that anticipated cuts of between $2.2 million and $3.6 million.

“Right now it looks like we can further minimize job loss but certainly will not be able to avert it altogether,” Ratliff said.

Appomattox

Sunday’s General Assembly vote means Appomattox schools could avoid layoffs, Superintendent Dorinda Grasty said.

“We don’t anticipate a reduction in force,” Grasty said, adding that she couldn’t be certain until the county school board received final figures from federal, state and local levels.

The county schools’ budget appears in better financial shape than it did two weeks ago, when the state legislature was considering even larger funding cuts in public education, Grasty said.

Salary decreases and employee furloughs were also not being considered at this time, she said.