By Sarah Vogelsong
CP Reporter
The School Board last night unanimously approved a proposed budget for next year of $44.2 million, a $1.7 million increase over this year’s budget.
These are the same numbers that the School Board took to its joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 27 and put to public hearing Feb. 2. Although the Board of Supervisors indicated that additional cuts would be necessary, the School Board for the moment isn’t budging on its $1.7 million request.
The largest items of the request would funnel approximately $540,000 toward an across-the-board salary scale adjustment and step increase for teachers, $467,000 for a 6 percent salary increase for support staff, and $426,000 for additional staff, including two new elementary teachers, one new secondary teacher, and three new K–2 paraprofessionals.
This proposed budget will now go to the Board of Supervisors for their approval. School Board Vice Chairman Nancy Carson urged people to come out and voice their support for the proposal at the supervisors’ Feb. 10 meeting, which will begin at 6 p.m. at the Caroline Community Services Center.
In other news from the School Board’s Feb. 9 meeting, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Elementary Education Kathleen Beane presented the Assessment Review Team’s K–8 testing plan for the 2015–16 school year.
This plan, said Beane, was crafted using data drawn from surrounding localities and aims “to reflect the appropriate use of tests to drive instruction.”
Overall, the team’s plan reduces testing in all grades, cutting the frequency of benchmark testing in many subjects from four to two times per year and omitting redundancies.
Certain tests, such as the Standards of Learning exams and the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) tests for students in grades K–3, are mandated by the state and cannot be eliminated. Others, however, are up to the discretion of the county.
A memo from Beane to team members notes that Caroline “has an assessment regimen that is consistent with many other counties.”
Under the Assessment Review Team’s plan, K–1 students will take the PALS reading test, as well as reading and math benchmark tests twice a year. Students in grade 1 will also take the STAR math test.
Grade 2 students will take the PALS reading test once per year, reading and math benchmarks twice per year, and the STAR reading and math tests three times per year.
Grade 3 students will take the PALS reading test in the fall, the STAR reading and math tests three times per year, reading and math benchmarks three times per year, science and social studies benchmarks twice a year, and reading and math SOLs once per year.
Students in grades 4 and 5 will take the STAR reading and math tests once per year; benchmarks in reading, math, Virginia studies, and science three times per year; and reading and math SOLs once per year. Fourth graders will also take the Virginia studies SOL, and fifth graders will take the science SOL and the twice-yearly social studies benchmark.
Students in grades 6 through 8 will take the STAR reading and math tests once per year, as well as reading, math, science, and social studies benchmarks “as appropriate per grade level” three times a year. SOL tests in these areas will also be administered according to the student’s grade.
“It still looks like a lot of tests,” Carson observed.
Beane disagreed, however, stating, “You’re looking at children coming to school anywhere between 170 and 180 days, and we think with that number of days, and these particular number of tests, it’s not a lot.”
The Assessment Review Team has been meeting since September to investigate the current status of testing in the school division. The 20-person team includes parents, teachers, and administrators from all four county schools, as well as four administrators from the Central Office.
The team’s plan will be published on the CCPS website, as well as on the websites of the individual schools.
Finally, the School Board will hold a public hearing Feb. 12 to get residents’ input on its search for a superintendent to replace Gregory Killough, who will depart June 30 to take over as superintendent of Roanoke County Public Schools. The hearing will be held at Caroline Middle School and will begin at 5:30 p.m.