LEBANON, Va. – School system officials across Southwest Virginia may be struggling to balance their budgets with multi-million-dollar state funding cuts, but so far only one has promised not to lay anyone off in the process: Russell County.
“We live in a coal mining area, and we know a lot of our friends and neighbors down through the years that have been laid off, and the things that have been difficult for them,” said school board Chairman Carl Jackson, during a meeting last Wednesday. “We really just don’t want to get into that predicament at all [for school system employees] if at all possible.”
Instead, the school board is offering incentives for people to retire early and crossing their fingers; as of Wednesday, 16 employees had taken them up on the offer.
The school system is also considering an across-the-board salary cut, but Jackson said it will be significantly less than the 10 percent across-the-board increase that school system employees received two years ago.
Even with the increase, Russell County teachers are among the lowest-paid in the state – but, unlike their colleagues in surrounding jurisdictions, all of them are slated to keep their jobs.
“I feel if we would have to lay people off, we would really be impacting the economy also, and it is better to take a little reduction in pay than to not get any pay at all,” said board member Linda Cross.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Ernie Roberts, who represents the Virginia Education Association in several Southwest Virginia counties, thanked the Russell County School Board for its decision.
“You’re the only board I’ve heard that has taken a stand not to lay people off, so I do commend you for that and I appreciate it,” he said.
Helen Marlowe, who represents VEA in the other half of the region, said none of the school boards wants to let employees go, but in many cases it depends how much funding they get from local governments.
“They don’t want to do it, but if they don’t get funding, they may end up having to do it,” said Marlowe. “It’s all now in a wait and see if they get the needed money, then they’ll be safe.”
One of those counties is Smyth, where school system Superintendent Mike Robinson said he’s hopeful a reduction in force won’t be needed – but even without one, there will be fewer jobs in the school system because a lot of positions are being left unfilled.
In Washington County, where dozens of jobs are on the table for potential cuts in addition to those eliminated by attrition, Assistant Superintendent Tom Graves said that with school systems around the nation struggling with funding cuts, come June 30 – the end of the fiscal year – hundreds of thousands of educators will be out of jobs.
“What do you think that’s going to do for the economy?” he asked.
Roberts said the teaching profession will probably lose some of its best and brightest to private industry – and, with teachers’ job security and retirement in jeopardy, schools probably won’t get them back even when the economy improves.
Worse, the next generation of potential teachers might not even head down the road of education; enrollment is already dropping in teaching classes, and Roberts can foresee a time in the future when there’s actually a shortage of teachers.
Why are so many school divisions considering layoffs? Roberts said the answer is simple: “I think the others see it as maybe the easy way out.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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