School Budget

School Budget

The budget passed by the School Board will require a four-cent increase to local real estate rate unless the county budget can be cut somewhere else.

For a taxpayer with a $100,000 house that works out to another $40, not very much, but most Rappahannock properties are assessed at more than $100,000.'

The only other place to look for cuts in the school budget is in the proposed raises. A study in this week’s Rappahannock News shows county teacher salaries just barely exceed the average of surrounding counties, trailing Culpeper and Fauquier counties throughout a teacher’s career, trailing Madison County at 20 years and trailing Warren County at the top of the scale.

The proposed raise of 2.5 percent plus step will probably not improve the situation much, but it is more than most teachers in surrounding counties can expect.

Unfortunately the salary scale is not fair. Teachers who are completing their second or third year will get only the cost of living increase. That is true for teachers at the top of the scale also, and it

is in the bottomjtnd top of the scale that Rappahannock salaries are ^farthest down on the list of state school systems. ’ Teachers in the middle ranges of the salary scale stand to get up to 6 percent raises.

The uneven steps on the scale are the result of a decision made years ago to push up the starting.salary without pushing up the next few steps. The following year Rappahannock’s starting salary was the highest in the neighborhood. Now the county is stuck with the results of that decision without the recruiting advantage of, being on top.

The decision the Board of Supervisors must make on the school budget is not easy, but cutting the raises will certainly make the job of recruiting and retaining the best teachers much more difficult.