001I would like to call to order the public hearing of the Newprenue School Board for Tuesday, March 10, 2026. On behalf of the members of the school board and the superintendent, I welcome each of you present or watching. A quorum is present to transact the business of the school division. We will begin tonight's meeting with the pledge to the flag. Mrs. Alger, would you do us the honor? Yes, please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you and you may be seated. At this time, the board will open its public hearing for comments regarding the proposed FY 2027 operating budget. Prior to your comments, a short overview will be
002provided. The board considers this an opportunity to listen to your comments and will consider your concerns in its deliberations. We ask that you comply with our three-minute time limit so that all persons who desire to comment may have an opportunity to do so. As you begin your comments, a green light will come on, a yellow light signals that you have 30 seconds remaining. A red light and beep indicates that your time is up. Thank you for your adherence to our guidelines. Mr. Fairheart, will you provide us with an overview? Good evening, Madam Chairman, Madam Vice Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Mitchell. Dr. Buss, I see you got the dress memo. Yes, I did. Very nice. Thank you. I recognize Dr. Yvette Smith, our executive director of human resources last week, because our team works
003closely with her team with benefits in regards to driving the budget. So her and Ms. Armstrong were here last week, and I forgot to introduce those people. And then Irene Cooper, who is our supervisor for budget, she was unable to be with us. She was supporting her daughter in the regional basketball tournament, and she has been a big driver behind our efforts. So good evening. Happy to present an overview of the proposed superintendent's operating budget for FY27. You all are well aware of our five strategic goals that we've identified for Elevate 2030. And you can see that those are the drivers behind our budget and our spending priorities. Academic success, students' staff support, leadership and instruction, professional development, family and community engagement, recruitment, retention, school and building safety, technology supports and operations and maintenance. This
004is where we stand as we speak. As you are aware, our proposed budget is based on the governor's budget at this point. The House and Senate have different proposals on the table. General Assembly is supposed to close on Friday. Well, it will close on Friday. I don't know that we'll have a resolution to our budget issue at that point, but it will. It will adjourn on Friday for sure. You can see that the change from FY26, we're proposed to receive $9.6 million from the state. We're requesting $8.2 million in additional funding from the city for a total increase of our budget of $17.8, which represents a 4.3% increase. This is how our operating budget by revenue major source. Essentially, in a nutshell, we're funded by the city and the state. We're almost 98.7 or whatever
005that is funded from those two sources. So our federal and others support us a little bit, but we're certainly dependent upon the city for revenue we don't receive from the state. These are our costs. You can see non-personnel, salaries and benefits. Essentially, the message here is 85% of our dollars are tied up in personnel. This is our operating budget by function. You can see the instructional services equates to about 68.8%. We discussed last week about how that number could be skewed a little bit and why it may be a little lower from last year. Administration health and attendance is 6.5%. Transportation about the same. Operations and maintenance about 12.8%. Debt services not included in our operating budget and the technology is about 5.4%. Of course, our objective is to attract and retain our staff, provide
006competitive compensation for our staff. The proposal includes a general increase of 3% for all of our staff. Also increases our starting teacher pay by $1,000, associate teacher pay by the same. And we aim to maintain competitive compensation for all of our staff and provide sign-on bonuses for high-need positions as defined by the Department of Education and with our discretion for certain schools if necessary. This is how we prioritize our budget and this is aligned to our strategic plan, of course, academic literacy. We have about $312.4 million dedicated there. Culture of advancement, 54.7. Civic and business partnerships, 24 million. 29.7 million for work readiness. And then elevating our identity is about 8.4 million. And some of our hidden costs are embedded within each of those. I'll speak to operations and maintenance to begin with because none
007of this would be possible without some of the things that we have to do behind the scenes. So a proportion of that is embedded within those costs as well. This is our staffing. We are down about 13.5 positions from the current fiscal year. Those were all vacancies and we've adjusted some and moved some of our grant funded positions into operating to offset that. But you can see essentially the message here is 50% of our workforce are teachers. The expectation actually makes up about 11% of our workforce. This is our health insurance proposal for next year. You can see that on average cost per member went up about $566. That's not per member, that's an average cost of members. And you can see what we're proposing to do is the school board is going to cover
008$1.5 million. We're going to ask the employees to pick up about $200,000 of that increase. You can see the potential change and increase depending on your plan. If you're an individual, it could range from $1.50 per month to $7.47 per month. Family plans could potentially increase from $3.36 to $18.45 per month. This is how we balance the budget. Then you'll see that we're minus 13.65 FTEs. You can see where we had increases, where we were able to actually decrease. BRS is one. You can see the decrease for health insurance premiums. And then we also have our health care cost plan. If you go down to the bottom section, the non-personnel, you can see where we have a little bit of money to where we have a need essentially. Capital maintenance has increased. Utilities have increased
009by $1 million. And then contract services, which is somewhat related to capital maintenance, but also some of our other budget areas as well. So you can see our $17.8 million total. If we go back to the beginning, that's $9.6 million. An additional revenue projected from the state and then 8.2 million asks from the city. And here we are today for our public hearing. Next week on St. Patrick's Day, we'll be here to ask for your approval of the superintendent's proposed budget. I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you. And first card that we have is Miss Carolyn Jones. Hey, good evening. I'm Carolyn Jones. I live here in Newport News and I am a teacher. But I'm not really here to talk about being a teacher tonight. I'm here to talk
010about the bus drivers. I understand that the school board has made a lot of progress on figuring out how to raise bus driver wages. But the starting wage is still honestly shockingly low to me. The way I think about our bus drivers, you know, they're kind of the first line of defense in terms of they don't have metal detectors on the buses. If somebody gets on the bus with something crazy that they're not supposed to have a gun, drugs, a stink bomb. Yes, there's a story behind that last one. It's the bus drivers who have to deal with it. And there is no other adult there to immediately help them resolve it. They are, I'm not exaggerating when they are our first line of defense. And they're the ones who get our students to school
011in the morning. The rest of us can't do our jobs if kids are running an hour late to school because there's a bus driver shortage and another bus driver had to go back and pick kids up late. You know, it gets that much harder for us. So when you say they're starting wages, I believe it was $22.76 per hour. And I understand that they can work their way up, you know, by getting additional certifications or steps and all that. But the way I see it, if you're trying to recruit somebody to drive anywhere from 40 to probably 60 screaming children in a bus with cell phones, with TikTok challenges, whatever else in traffic on Jefferson Avenue, you got to start paying them a bit more than that. Some of these routes are about at the
012high school level, about an hour, hopefully a little less for elementary school. But what you're basically telling somebody is, hey, take these kids from point A to point B, basically babysit them for an hour. Babysit dozens of potentially screaming hyperactive, sometimes very poorly behaved children for an hour in traffic while driving a very heavy bus. They're going to be driving a heavy vehicle, and it will be all applicable safety laws, stopping at every train tracks, blah, blah, blah. And you'll be about $18 richer at the end of it, depending on taxes. I noticed that security officers who also work really, really hard, they're getting $20 and some odd cents in their starting wage. And they also deserve a raise. But if you told me, hey, Mrs. Jones, we're letting you off, your choices are bus
013driver or security officer. But bus driver pays more, I would still take security officer because there are other adults in that building, because you theoretically get to work in air conditioning and you're not driving a heavy vehicle, and you're not dealing with potentially 40 screaming children at one time. Personally, I think that sums up probably a large portion of why we have a bus driver shortage. And respectfully, I don't want to see any more raises going to any administrator making over $100,000 until we solve this bus driver shortage, especially since you've been talking to parents about it all year, pretty much. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any more cards? Are there any more cards? Last call for cards. So at this time, I'm just going to take the liberty to thank Mr. Fairheart and
014staff for your hard work on the budget, crossing every I, dotting every I, crossing every T. And people, they look at it and they look at everything. And as a matter of fact, from the charts that you all provided, there was some spirited conversation throughout some other divisions based on the information that we provided. So people are watching and they're looking at what we're doing. And we want you to know that we do appreciate all the hard work that has gone into what you all have presented to us. And thank you for every parent, every teacher, everyone that contributed as well. And we're just trying to all come together to do what's best for children. And if there is no further business, we stand adjourned.