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Draft Plan Calls For 3% Pay Hike For Employees
A draft budget for the 2024-2025 school year, which focuses on providing cost-of-living raises for employees and covering rising health care costs, was presented to the Buena Vista School Board last week.
Under the draft plan, the school division would increase its funding request from the city from $2.3 million for the 2023-2024 school year to $2.5 million for the 2024-2025 school year, around $200,000.
Next year’s budget was built around an average daily attendance of 800 students.
District Superintendent Dr. Tony Francis told the Board that predicting next year’s state appropriation is difficult with the General Assembly session still ongoing.
“Doing a budget is kind of like throwing darts at a moving target, because we don’t really know which budget we’re going to get,” he said. “This is based on the governor’s budget. The House and Senate budget just came out on Sunday.”
“The House and Senate provides more money, but the problem right now is that the state has not put that into what we call the ‘calc tool,’ which tells each individual school division how much more or less money they are getting,” Francis explained.
The final budget is expected to put more money toward schools.
“Overall, I feel like the compromise budget will give us more money than the governor’s budget,” said Francis. “I just don’t have a clue as to whether it’s going to be $100,000 more or $300,000 more or even $500,000 more.”
Currently, the district is planning on providing a 3% raise for all employees, expected to cost about $311,000.
The district is also budgeting for a significant increase in employee health care costs.
“Health care costs are going to go up 15%; that’s the minimum, 15%,” Francis told the Board. “It’s not just Buena Vista. Everyone in our consortium is experiencing this — on the low end, 10 to 12%, on the high end, 18 to 20%, so we’re right in the middle there with that 15%.”
An additional $350,000 is set aside to cover this cost, which may increase if additional state funding is provided. For now, no increase in premiums for employees is planned.
The price of consumables, such as electricity and gas, is also rising.
“We’re looking at funding a 7-10% increase for consumables, just to pay for fuel, electricity, natural gas,” Francis told the Board. “That’s something that you have to do, because Dominion Power and Columbia, you have to pay, and their rates go up every year.”
Money is also budgeted for several positions in the division that have previously been funded through the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund.
These positions include assistant superintendent of instruction and assistant maintenance supervisor, as well as a behavioral specialist, who will transition into a school counselor.
In all, $200,000 will be required to keep these positions. The School Board will hold a work session on March 7 to finalize the budget. At that meeting, the Board also plans to discuss salary scales for paraprofessionals.
“One of the things we’ll talk about in that work session is, we really want to fix the paraprofessional scale, get them to starting at $18,500,” Francis said. “That makes sure that we’re paying them over the minimum wage.
“So we’d like to move those paraprofessional scales up and enhance those scales. But if you give everybody exactly the same, it’s not going to go as far,” he said.
