VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to add important context to a quote attributed to Superintendent Robertson about possible school division staffing losses.
Superintendent Donald Robertson says classes and teachers aren’t among potential cuts in the 2024-25 school year budget for Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS).
“We're not planning on cutting any positions,” Robertson said in an interview with 13News Now on Thursday.
VBCPS is funded by three main revenue funds: local, state and federal. Robertson said not only has the cost to run schools gone up, but the lack of funds coming from Richmond, plus a tax reduction from the city, is causing funding issues.
"Historically, we were expecting between 10 and 13 million [dollars] when we were projecting our budget several months ago. That didn't happen,” Robertson said.
Robertson said elective class choices, like band and art, are based on enrollment. While not ideal, he said, if the numbers for one course are low, some teachers may have to split time between buildings or mesh a few classes together.
"We're not cutting the class itself," Robertson said. "We're just saying, you don't have enough students to have two classes or you don't have enough students to have three classes."
This is all a proposal at this point, and would need to be approved. Robertson also said the division may have to make up funding losses through attrition.
"If the city council proceeds with a two-cent tax reduction, part of the decisions we'll have to make is to cut some positions: four assistant principals, one technology support technician, one instructional technology support position and three Library Media assistants," he said.
"On any given year, we normally have that many staff and those positions who either retire or resign, move and go somewhere else. So the idea is that we would cover those [funding] losses by people who leave the division."
Robertson said parents shouldn’t take an issue with the city's funding for schools but rather Richmond, where he says the real issue lies.
“Virginia is severely underfunding schools,” he said.
School board members are set to vote on the budget at next Tuesday's school board meeting. From there, it will head to the city council for approval.
