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Potential staff increases aren’t the only thing the Warren County School Board is considering as it advances the 2024-2025 budget for Warren County Public Schools (WCPS), which has several areas of immediate and future needs.

Left to right: School Board members Andrea Lo, Antoinette Funk, Kristen Pence and Melanie Salins during their meeting and work session on Wednesday, May 15th.

During the work session of the four-hour meeting on May 15, School Board Chair Kristen Pence, Vice Chair Antoinette Funk and members Andrea Lo and Melanie Salins heard from WCPS staff exactly what is needed to help for the next school year and beyond to successfully train the school department’s approximately 5,000 students. Board member Tom McFadden Jr. was absent.

WCPS Superintendent Christopher Ballenger advised the school board that currently everything from teacher salaries to health insurance, janitorial services, technology upgrades, math screeners, substitutes, playground mulch, additional staff and buses determine the 2024-2025 budget.

Some highlights of WCPS’ specific needs in the upcoming school year included in the 2021-2026 Comprehensive Plan include:

Teacher

In addition to discussing the additional costs associated with increasing salaries for teachers, teaching assistants and other staff, WCPS staff talked about hiring more teachers and/or extending contracts.

For example, Jody Lee, WCPS human resources director (pictured above), said the agriculture teacher position should be increased from a 10-month to an 11-month contract. He said the number of agriculture classes was increasing, as were the duties of agriculture teachers, which now spanned more than 12 months despite being on 10-month contracts. Staff say WCPS could also benefit from adding another agriculture teacher position.

“Most of your agriculture teachers will be employed for 11 or 12 months because they work in the summer, and that wouldn’t stop them from needing another position,” Lee said. “This is just something that needs to happen because they are working over the summer and the stipend they receive should only cover the additional hours during the school year and not just for the summer.”

Ballenger agreed, adding that if the school division gets a farm lab — which in Virginia provides agriculture students with hands-on opportunities to gain farm experience — there will be animals there that need daily care, year-round.

“As the (Ag) program grows, you will see that we need to compensate for Ag teachers’ time,” he said. “And that’s exactly what needs to be done.”

In other teacher-related areas, school board members again discussed a proposed salary increase of 3 percent plus one step for teachers and teaching assistants, as well as a proposed salary increase of 3 percent including one step for all other roles.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors, which funds a large portion of the WCPS budget, has publicly stated that it supports such increases.

substitute teacher

The current debate is whether to outsource the subcontractor hiring process or take the system in-house. At its meeting Wednesday, the school board did not decide which path to take but weighed recommendations from WCPS staff.

Currently, Educational Solution Services (ESS) is contracted by the department to hire substitutes, but there have been complaints about the company from teachers, substitutes and even board members.

Lee said he and Kendall Poe, WCPS assistant director of human resources and finance, formed a committee to analyze the situation and make a recommendation to the school board.

They created a tender for the outsourcing and received information from six companies. After narrowing the list to three companies (EduStaff, Kelly Education and ESS), Lee said the committee decided that WCPS should continue to use ESS.

One of the reasons for this, Lee said, is the comfort of working with ESS, a company with a long-standing contract; ESS will provide a new absence management system and an on-site representative; ESS also offers nurse substitutions, an area of ​​need for WCPS; and the cost, while higher than the current budget, was about the same markup for all three companies.

“Kendall and I would also like a fair opportunity to make the corrections that we know we could have done a better job on our part, and ESS is responsible for that and willing to do its part to make the partnership work,” said Lee. refers to complaints against ESS.

“I think there are things on our side that we need to do better and I would like the opportunity to do that,” he said. “We know what we have to do now. We know how to better manage this and offer our clients direct access to a representative who will be in our building every day and can assist with last minute calls or whatever the case may be.”

“I am disappointed that this committee appears to have turned a deaf ear to the fact that ESS has, in fact, repeatedly dropped the ball,” said Salins, who supports the introduction of the sub-recruitment system internally.

technology

WCPS Interim Technology Director Doug Stefnoski, who also coordinates instructional technology, explained why his department is requesting a $600,000 budget increase.

“I just wanted to point out that this isn’t really just a one-time expense, even though the narrative we’ve been talking about is to use that money to buy PCs because we previously talked about the security update have spoken. said Stefnoski. “I wanted to talk about the reasons why I am requesting a permanent increase to our budget.”

Stefnoski (pictured above) said the department’s current technology needs already exceed allocated funding, while unfunded needs from the previous school year have been rolled over to this year’s budget.

“In short,” he said, “this spending has already put us in the red.”

And while WCPS receives funding from the federal E-Rate program — which is a rebate program rather than a grant that allows it to make technology-related purchases — the school division must show a 30 percent share.

“We rely on this to purchase many of our Internet devices and also to pay our Internet bills,” Stefnoski told board members. “So, in my opinion, it’s basically throwing money away if you don’t have the resources.”

And when he said that WCPS needs PCs, Stefnoski explained: “It’s really because we don’t have enough resources in this particular cost center to be able to develop an adequate upgrade plan so that we can plan our expenses over a longer period of time .” Period of time.”

Right now, he added, WCPS is “operating in emergency mode, trying to raise the $600,000 to meet the PC needs we have now, but that would only meet our current need for it.” We have others Needs.”

For example, WCPS must consider a regular revenue plan for Chromebooks as well as battery backups, wireless access points and switches. And while some of that can be funded through the E-Rate program, the department still needs to have the resources to develop a plan for it, he said.

“And in some cases, some of these things are not a guarantee that we will get the funding,” Stefnoski said, adding that rising costs are another consideration.

“So if we just have the same funding in that cost center, then we’re going to be further in trouble next year because we don’t have enough to just cover the inflated costs of some of these programs that we’re using. ” he said. “I want to say that we don’t have enough to meet the needs of the school that we are already trying to meet. So we need a bigger budget for technology.”

“Are you just catching up and putting Band-Aids on the things you’re working on?” Pence asked.

“Yes,” Stefnoski said. “I mean, these guys here, the technicians, they’re the MacGyvers, the wizards, the misfits. They hold things together with gum and tape to make everything work. But at some point we have to be able to get the equipment we need so our teachers and students can do their jobs.”

Other expenses related to the proposed budget increase for the Technology Department include laptop upgrades, hardware purchases, and increased security (e.g., cybersecurity, data security, and physical security such as cameras and speakers).

“I really can’t underestimate how bad it can be for a school system if they don’t have adequate security measures in place,” Stefnoski said. “We have a great team working to make sure we have a safe system, but anything we can do to help.”

Future needs

As part of their 2021-2026 Comprehensive Plan, WCPS staff also highlighted several future consideration needs, including higher starting compensation for new custodians to stop high turnover rates; School bus replacements, expanded bus routes and higher fuel costs; increasing costs of maintaining preventative facilities; and, among other things, recruiting, employing and retaining highly qualified employees.

The work continues

Nothing in the 2024-2025 budget has been finalized yet, according to WCPS Finance Director Robert Ballentine. He said the Virginia General Assembly recently approved the state budget and WCPS, along with Warren County supervisors, will wait to see how that plays out locally.

“I’m excited to see what exactly that means,” said Ballentine (pictured above). “I don’t know if there will be more money or less money, or maybe it will be exactly the same that we have built into what we have done so far. But that could impact things positively or negatively.”

And the district has not yet voted on its budget, which includes funding for WCPS.

“We don’t have a final budget,” Pence said, “so I think it’s appropriate for us to talk about what we can do and what we can do with some of the additional requests and needs that we’ve had.” I I mean, ultimately we still have to raise the budget we need. Everyone seems to agree on teacher raises. Everyone agrees on the teacher additions that we need a reading specialist and the ag teacher.”

“I want to make sure we keep the four reading specialists because I think that’s just a non-negotiable,” Funk added.

Video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.