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Henrico Schools Seek 9 Percent More / Proposed Budget Would Raise Salaries for Staff and Teachers and Add Several New Positions

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 12:01 CST

By OLYMPIA MEA

An increase in teachers' pay is included in the 2006-07 Henrico County school system budget proposed last night by Superintendent Fred Morton IV.

Other features of his plan include maintaining class sizes and adding about 90 instructional positions, including a testing coordinator for each high school.

Morton's proposed $446.6 million financial plan includes a 4 percent pay increase for all eligible school system employees. Further, a teacher salary scale adjustment would increase starting teachers' salaries by 6.5 percent and allow for growth for teachers at the top of the scale.

The proposed budget is a 9 percent increase over this year's. It asks for $184.4 million from the county, representing a 3.8 percent increase over last year's request. The system is also expecting about $30 million more in state money for the 2006-07 budget, which takes effect July 1.

Before Morton's presentation, Sherri Arnold with the Henrico Education Association asked the School Board to, among other things, improve teachers' pay by making starting and mid-career salaries more competitive and by establishing a maximum class size of 25 students for all secondary core Standards of Learning classes.

Among the new instructional positions in Morton's proposed plan are 18 high school teachers, four career- and technical-education teachers, eight elementary school teachers, 25 exceptional- education teachers and 14.5 guidance and school counselors.

Also last night, Stuart P. Myers was voted School Board chairman and Linda L. McBride vice chairwoman for this year. Member James A. Fiorelli was the lone dissenter on the chair vote. Fiorelli and Hugh C. Palmer opposed McBride's nomination. Fiorelli said after the meeting that he thinks those positions should rotate between members.

The board also awarded a $20 million construction contract to Southwood Builders Inc. for a middle school in the county's eastern end.

Earlier yesterday, in a work session, the board continued discussion of evaluating its program that supplies every high- and middle-school student, teacher and administrator with a laptop computer.

The researcher selected to collect the bulk of the data is being paid by Dell Inc., which supplies the high school laptops. Fiorelli asked if Dell could give Henrico schools the evaluation money and the schools could pay the researcher directly to avoid any conflict issues.

Wendell C. Roberts, the board's attorney, said for Henrico to contract directly with the researcher, it would have to draft a request for proposals.

Board member Lloyd E. Jackson Jr. found that undesirable. "We can't go through that process. We'd never get it done."

Contact staff writer Olympia Meola at omeola@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6812.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

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