{"id":181,"date":"2013-02-08T18:26:31","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T18:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=181"},"modified":"2013-02-15T18:39:09","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T18:39:09","slug":"a-closer-look-superintendents-estimate-of-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/a-closer-look-superintendents-estimate-of-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"A Closer Look: Superintendent\u2019s Estimate of Needs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Superintendent Dr. James Merrill presented his Estimate of Needs this week to the Virginia Beach School Board, which outlined his plan to balance the operating budget for the 2013-14 school year.<\/p>\n<p>In his presentation, Merrill outlined the financial outlook for the upcoming school year. Given increasing health care and utility costs as well as a still slow-going local economy, the school division initially faced a shortfall of $32 million.<\/p>\n<p>However, the school division was able to decrease that shortfall to just under $16 million by pulling $14 million from the division\u2019s savings and an additional $2 million from the city\u2019s Sandbridge TIF.<\/p>\n<p>To fill that hole, Merrill made the following recommendations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Raising class sizes in grades 6-12 by increasing the ratio used to determine class size by .25. This will save $1.7 million.<\/li>\n<li>Freezing all vacant central office positions, with a potential cut of six to 10 positions. This will save $302,000<\/li>\n<li>Cutting all non-personnel budgets by 5 percent. This will save $3.5 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Additionally, Dr. Merrill shared \u00a0several cost-saving measures \u00a0will help save money:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A reduction to the budget due to more retirement of veteran employees than projected and hiring of newer employees. This saved $5.4 million<\/li>\n<li>A reduction to the budget due to a higher decrease in enrollment than projected, which means lower costs. This saved $3.8 million<\/li>\n<li>The implementation of the new hybrid high school schedule, which will go into effect next school year, will save $1.1 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These recommendations from Dr. Merrill are just the beginning of the budget decision process, which will not be completed until City Council approves an operating budget in May.<\/p>\n<p>For up to date developments on the VBCPS budget, visit the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vbschools.com\/administration\/Lowdown\/2014\/index.asp\"> Lowdown on Your School Dollars<\/a> webpage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Superintendent Dr. James Merrill presented his Estimate of Needs this week to the Virginia Beach School Board, which outlined his plan to balance the operating budget for the 2013-14 school [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}