Letters to the Editor: June 5, 2012

Kudos to The Examiner for this editorial, as well as to the Eisenhower family for opposing the current design of the Eisenhower memorial.

Peter Gurvin

Bethesda

FCPS knows where staffing reserve personnel are sent

Re: “No records for FCPS ‘untracked labor pool,’ ” May 30

I would like to clarify and correct some of the assertions made in Barbara Hollingsworth’s column regarding the use of the staffing reserve in the Fairfax County Public Schools budget. The staffing reserve is not an “untracked pool of labor.” We know exactly where staffing reserve personnel are assigned and how much is spent each year.

Each year, we estimate enrollments for all FCPS schools and allocate staff based on those projections. At the start of the school year, when we have actual numbers to work with, we begin to draw from the staffing reserve to give more positions to schools that experience unusual growth, large class sizes or additional services for special education students.The staffing reserve provides the flexibility of a littlemore than one position per school.

In FY 2013, the approved budget will include $11.5 million for 242.1 staffing reserve positions.In FY 2012, the budget included 240.1 positions at $10.7 million; FCPS utilized 239.8 positions.In FY 2011, we allocated all 211.1 positions budgeted at $9.6 million.In FY 2010, the approved budget included 214.1 positions at $9.5 million with an additional 20 one-time positions added by the School Board at the end of FY 2009.However, 85 positions were not used and funding was returned to the School Board’s operating budget at the third-quarter budget review.

What we don’t maintain is a historical centralized list of where personnel are assigned each year because, frankly, such a list would be meaningless in relation to future staffing needs. Staffing is recalculated each year based on updated enrollment, so reserve positions are used to address actual student enrollment needs beyond those projected as circumstances change every year.

A staffing reserve is a fiscally sound practice because positions are only allocated when needed, as opposed to building them into each school’s budget when they may or may not be needed.If reserve positions are not allocated to schools, the funding and positions are returned to the School Board operating budget at a quarterly budget review — as was the case in FY 2010.

It’s obvious, based on the misinformation contained in Ms. Hollingsworth’s column, that fully understanding the complexities of budgeting for a school system as large as Fairfax takes a great deal of time and patience.

Jack D. Dale

Superintendent,

Fairfax County Public Schools

Hypocritical Dems support sex-selection abortions

Re: “Democrats fire next shot in ‘war on women,’ ” May 29

Senate Democrats are trying to convince women that they love them more than Republicans by forcing a vote on identical pay for men and women in the same jobs. Such legislation would be a can of worms, since many pay scales depend on seniority and performance.

On the other hand, House Democrats just defeated a bill to ban sex-selection abortions; i.e., killing a baby girl in the womb just because she is a girl. It is difficult to comprehend any legislator voting against the lives of these vulnerable girls, especially since the sex of a baby is only definitely determined at the mid-point of pregnancy — when an abortion would be excruciatingly painful.

Carolyn Naughton

Silver Spring