By Aleks Dolzenko

Published: March 26, 2008

The Manassas School Board approved the superintendent's budget Tuesday, minus a couple of cosmetic improvements.

The original budget of $96.2 million presented by Superintendent Gail Pope was cut by $450,000, all of which is coming out of the Capital Improvement Plan's 2008-09 budget. The money would have paid for gutter and spout improvements at Haydon Elementary, energy-saving lighting retrofits and heat pump replacements at multiple schools.

The board voted to put the money into the 2009-2010 CIP budget. The postponement of these projects, along with $900,000 in savings from the 2007-08 budget, means the school board will now use an estimated $3 million of its $6.7 million "rainy day" fund in the 2008-09 school year — $1.35 million less than initially pro-jected.

Other modifications to the budget—which will be presented to city council next Wednesday—included a 15-cent increase in breakfasts and lunches and a 5 percent increase in the a la carte menus at schools. The School Board also voted to eliminate two English as Second Language positions, reduce Special Education position hires from three to two and hire an additional Weems Elementary School Block program teacher.

In all, the budget now includes roughly 11 new full-time employees instead of 14. The board retained recommended an average teacher salary increase of 6 percent. Approximately half of the increase will be a cost of living adjust-ment.

The board debated and ultimately decided to continue the school system's involvement in a pre-school pro-gram that serves at-risk 4-year-olds. Manassas currently has an all-day kindergarten and is part of the Prince Wil-liam chapter of Head Start, a federal program that serves children up to 5 years old.

Program involvement includes the hiring a teacher and an aide at each of three schools in the district, and is pro-jected to cost the schools an estimated $385,000.

School Board member Scott M. Albrecht questioned whether this was the right time to finance this program. Board member Curtis W. Wonderly said it's tough to identify all at-risk 4-year-olds if you only look at family in-come levels.

Wonderly also said the program was unfair because it would penalize those at-risk families that may make a few too many dollars to qualify.

But board member Tim J. Demeria said the schools shouldn't toss out that program in a tough budget year because helping some children is better than helping none at all.

Chairman Arthur P. Bushnell agreed with Demeria and lauded Pope for a budget that didn't need a whole lot of wrangling by the board before approval. In all, the 2008-09 budget is expected to grow by about 3 percent from this year's projected actual budget.

"It's a budget that's based almost solely on salary increases, no new programmatic changes except for the 4-year old program, which I think pays dividends for us in primary education, and increases that we saw in terms of fuel," Bushnell said.

Also on Tuesday, the School Board approved a three-year contract for Pope starting this summer and ending after the 2011 school year.

Pope's annual salary of $168,000 was bumped to $178,080—a 6 percent increase over last year. Pope was hired before the 2006 school year.

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-369-5738.