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The Buena Vista School Board heard an updated budget proposal at a special work session last week.
In February, the Board discussed its budget priorities for the upcoming 20242025 school year, many of which, such as raises for all division employees and local funding for positions previously funded under the American Rescue Plan, have stayed the same.
However, Buena Vista is also taking into account changes at both the state and local levels.
As Superintendent Dr. Tony Francis told the Board, working to close the teacher pay gap between Buana Vista and other area divisions has been a priority for years.
To that end, and considering the 3% raises financed through the Virginia House and Senate’s budgets, Francis presented a plan to give teachers 5% raises, above the 3% planned for the rest of the division staff.
“If the state budget has 3%, obviously we have to at least that, but we would love to do 5% for our teachers,” he said.
“If we were to do that, and we got 5% for the teachers, and we got additional money from the state, we could move them to $42,000 starting and it’ll go up to $62,000.”
A General Assembly bill to raise minimum wage to $13.50 an hour would also affect salaries in Buena Vista, particularly for paraprofessionals.
“Where that really affects us is paraprofessionals; I told you I wanted to fix that scale,” Francis told the Board. “Right now, if we can give a 3% increase to all our paraprofessionals, we would have some paraprofessionals that would not be at $13.50 an hour.”
“I’ve got a scale here that addresses that, but we’re going to need some additional funding from either the city or the state, to make sure that we get that,” he said.
The proposed FY25 budget totals just under $14.5 million. Based on planned increases to teacher and paraprofessional salaries, as well as rising healthcare costs, the Board is currently expected to ask Buena Vista City Council for $2.7 million in local funding, as compared to the $2.5 proposed in February. The local share of the budget for the current school year is $2.3 million.
The Board will hold additional discussions on the budget in March, before sending a finalized budget on to City council in early April.
