Schools now planning for cash-strapped 2011
By: Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer
July 6, 2009
With a bruising budget season behind them, the D.C. region's two largest school systems are preparing for an even tougher struggle over fiscal 2011.
On the line again in Montgomery and Fairfax counties are teaching positions, pay raises, and class size. But in contrast to last year, difficult measures to save dollars have already been made, and financial corners have already been cut.
Variables like fall enrollment, health care costs and tax revenue are unknown, but in both school districts the first two are trending upward while the latter is trending down, meaning higher costs but fewer dollars.
"The savings made last year will continue," said Marshall Spatz, budget director for Montgomery County schools, referring to $30 million in cuts on top of no raises for the system's more than 22,000 employees. "But that means it becomes harder and harder to make more reductions.
Spatz said that if there's one thing many people don't understand, it's that budgets are multi-year processes.
"When we complete one, it doesn't mean that the problems are solved, just that we deal with them one year at a time."
In slightly-larger Fairfax County, officials are preparing for the possibility of another year of flat schools funding. This year, it resulted in a $2.2 billion budget with no raises and a half-a-student class size increase for the second year in a row.
"We've never seen a half a kid -- that's a neat concept," said Mark Glaser, the often-cheeky president of the county's Federation of Teachers. "The formula works out to about two children per classroom, so it means we've raised class size by four to five kids in the past two years."
"We're having a lot of teacher turnover, and that should be taken into account," Glaser said.
Tom Israel, executive director of Montgomery County's teachers union, said everyone is conscious of the budget difficulties as they go into contract negotiation talks this fall. Talks will likely revolve around teachers' needs for more time and less paperwork, he said.
"Negotiations will be in part about how time is used, and who controls how time is used," Israel said.
A deal struck last fall guarantees teachers' benefits in Montgomery for five years. Last year, the cost of benefits grew by about $26 million to roughly $450 million, budget director Spatz said, or about 20 percent of the overall operating budget.
