0 Comments

Budget season at the best of times can provide a rather macabre spectacle to those watching from the sidelines: Voices are raised, tables are pounded and threats, veiled or otherwise, are occasionally lobbed like handfuls of wet confetti.

Last week the school board approved next year’s budget. And a few school board members spoke up to publically lament the cuts that have been made to a school system they are proud of.

And, as School Board Chairman Raymond Miller said, he hopes the reductions made in the approved budget will stave off further cuts from the county.

“This budget is still in jeopardy…” he said. “We need to come together behind this budget.”

But several parents in the audience who may have been empathetic, and who were supportive of the school board before the budget process reached its full swing, are getting combative.

One parent, Jody Hoskins, said of the school board, “You are not the true pawns you have been set up to be… We will work with you to help you cut waste- but the schools are no place for politics.”

Actually, the schools seem to be a hotbed for politics, and dissent, these days. 

The Goochland Education Parents Association, or GEPA, has drafted its own version of a school budget, one that, it says, doesn’t eliminate teaching positions or programs. What it does slash at, according to the organization, is administration.

These are tricky times. And there is already so much smoke, and so many mirrors, at our county board meetings these days that I can’t predict how the school budget is ultimately going to fare.

Neither side, neither the school board nor GEPA, seems ready to back down. And what are the supervisors meant to make of that? If the school board and the parents, two groups that are immediately invested in our children’s welfare, can’t even compromise, how can a divided board of supervisors possibly, successfully, intervene?

And, as Miller said at last week’s school board meeting, “Keep in mind that it may be tougher next year.”