Beach schools to discuss closing year-round programs

VIRGINIA BEACH

In a taste of tough budget choices to come, the superintendent called for an end to year-round schooling this summer.

The School Board intended to vote Thursday on a plan to phase out the city's four year-round elementaries within three years. Sign-ups for next year, though, had already begun to suffer.

Board members will vote on the plan at their next meeting, Feb. 4, the same day they'll see the first draft of the 2009-10 budget.

It will be $51.6 million smaller than projected and $38 million less than this year's $721 million budget, the first drop in more than a decade.

Superintendent Jim Merrill showed the board a list of ideas for cuts, many of which will make it into the budget draft.

If adopted, building projects would see a $14 million drop in funding and employees would get a 1.5 percent raise instead of a proposed 3.5 percent raise. Y ear-round schools would be shuttered, as would an elementary after-school program called Galaxy and a middle school program called Project X-CD. The list also proposed eliminating funding for behind-the-wheel driver's education, field trips and Saturday detention.

"Twelve months from now, we'll probably be talking about things that are more severe," Merrill said. Some one-time cuts could be offset by nearly $25 million the board set aside in October for future shortfalls.

Expecting a vote on the fate of the year-round programs at Corporate Landing, Plaza, Point O'View and Seatack elementaries, several dozen supporters attended the meeting.

Many were teachers at Seatack, which pioneered the city's year-round program in 2000.

"Seatack quickly transformed into a place of hope, where children who were known as underprivileged and underachievers began to experience continuous success," third-grade teacher Recharta Walston told the board.

Camisha Townsend, a teaching assistant who sent her two children to Seatack, said the board seemed resigned to eliminating the year-round schedule. "I hoped they'd reconsider," she said. "I think there are other programs they can cut."

Betsy Taylor, assistant superintendent for elementary education, helped start the year-round program a decade ago. On Thursday, she recommended ending it.

"It's the right thing to do right now," she said. "I think parents are confusing the school, and the wonderful things teachers do for the children, with the year-round schools. That will not go away. Year-round is a schedule. Our teachers will still provide for these children."

Lauren Roth, (757) 222-5133, lauren.roth@pilotonline.com