Superintendent Jack Dale shares plans for countywide budget cuts

Superintendent Jack Dale held a special press conference for student media on Oct. 30 to address the budget crisis facing Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS).

Dale announced he has begun planning for an estimated 5 percent budget cut for schools and 10 percent budget cut for central administration in the next fiscal year, beginning in July of 2009. “The county is facing a major revenue shortfall,” Dale said.

About 75 percent of the FCPS budget is provided by the county government. Another 20 percent comes from the state government and 5 percent is federal funding.
The biggest challenge facing Dale is where to make the cuts. He met with various members of FCPS departments to figure out where cuts are plausible. Employee salaries may be a target.

“The cost of living salary increase will be impossible to give without severely reducing the number of people and programs,” Dale said.

Some programs will have to be consolidated, and others will have to be removed altogether.

Last year, Jefferson decreased its staff by three teachers; nine teachers left and only six were hired. Similar cuts may be made next year. Students would most likely feel the change in increased class sizes and fewer elective offerings. Dale says class sizes could increase by as much as 2-3 students.

Jefferson has maintained all of its instructional programs thus far and was even able to add a new research lab last year.

For next year, “certain programs that have less than 29 students are vulnerable to being cut. The fine arts [and foreign language] folks are concerned,” Principal Evan Glazer said. “It comes down ultimately to how many people are willing to take the course.”

Some amenities that FCPS students have taken for granted in the past, such as the county paying for annual Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) tests, might be at risk as well.

At Jefferson, however, most students feel that the cost of an AP test would not affect their decision to take it. Senior Lily Hsiang took nine AP exams, counting the AP Physics exam as two tests. Even if she had to pay for the tests, she feels it would be worth it.

“Paying for it isn’t fabulous, but I’ll do it,” Hsiang said. She says she thinks her friends would “rather not [pay], but we’d go ahead and take the tests anyways.”
Other places to make cuts are in activities beyond the base curriculum. Requiring students to pay for participation in sports, or even eliminating some sports altogether, is also an option.

“Gymnastics is on the table to be cut,” Dale said.
Senior Ariel Coronel, a gymnastics team member of two years, plans to participate this winter. Coronel points out that for many students, high school gymnastics teams are the only way for them to participate in the sport.

“Maybe not as many people do [gymnastics] as football, but there are people who do gymnastics and can’t do it in a club,” she said. “It’s an actual sport that has athletes. If they cut it, I wouldn’t be able to do it at all.”
Kelly Watson, a gymnastics team member for the past three years, said “I definitely don’t think a sport should be cut altogether. But paying for sports isn’t totally unreasonable.”

Dale will present a preliminary budget plan to the FCPS School Board in January. Until then, he acknowledges that some things in the budget can’t change.

“We have to pay bills, we have to buy electricity, we have to hire people. What we are losing is our agility, our ability to respond to emerging needs,” Dale said.

Dale also addressed the county review of the FCPS six point grading scale, which differs from the 10 point grading scale of neighboring counties. The FCPS grading policy was last reviewed in the late 1970s, according to Dale.

The Washington Post reported today that FCPS school officials will create a guide to help college admissions officers understand the tougher FCPS grading scale. The guide will be sent as an addendum to early applications that have already been sent to schools by FCPS students.
The guide will include a grade distribution chart to allow admissions officers to compare an applicant’s performance with other students from the same school.

Dale points to the holistic approach to college admissions as a mediating factor, but also said, “There seems to be more of a tendency to look just at GPA for merit scholarships.”

Dale believes that changing the system to a 10 point grading scale is not necessarily the right choice. Instead, Dale focused on the weighting FCPS gives to students who take honors or AP classes.

Currently, FCPS students receive a 0.5 weight for AP classes and no weight for honors classes. Some jurisdictions provide a 0.5 weight for honors classes and a 1.0 weight for AP classes. If the policy were changed, it is unclear if Jefferson classes, which are all designated as honors classes, would receive the 0.5 weight.

“It appears that the weighting we give for AP and IB is a major factor at putting students at a disadvantage for merit scholarships. If we changed it to 1.0 like many other jurisdictions, it appears that would help more,” Dale said.

A change in the grading policy would be implemented for the 2009-2010 school year at the earliest. It is unclear whether post-hoc grade changes would be made for students who have already received grades using the older system.

Senior Walex Khmurets is taking five AP classes this year, in part to boost his sophomore and freshman year GPAs.
“If I get a 1.0 instead of a half, I’m going to take as many APs as I can,” Khmurets said. “It makes sense because the classes are a lot harder.”

The decision is ultimately left up to the School Board who will hear a recommendation from Dale.

“The difficulty of receiving any given grade is more dependent on the difficulty of the tests and assignments than on any given grading scale,” Dale said.