WJC Public Hearing on December 6

On December 6, the WJC School Board held a prebudget public hearing. The joint statement presented at the meeting has been endorsed by the League of Women Voters, Support Schools Now and the York-James City-Williamsburg NAACP Education Committee. Other local groups are currently considering endorsing this statement as well.

To show YOUR support for this statement, please read the statement and if you agree then simply add a comment to this message with the word "YES" and your name. Feel free to the forward this message to others.

Dr. Mathews and the WJC School Board,

On behalf of the League of Women Voters of Williamsburg, Support Schools Now, and the York-James City-Williamsburg NAACP Education Committee, we urge you to create a budget of need that will, at a minimum, help make WJC the best school division in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

We believe such a budget should include highly competitive salaries and benefits for all staff so that WJC can attract and retain the best individuals possible. The budget should maintain or improve student-teacher ratios; therefore, additional staff (and temporarily, trailers) will be necessary. We believe expanding reading instruction and remediation is critical to student achievement and success; thus, we encourage additional resources to be allocated for this purpose. We believe early instruction is one of the best ways to educate children; therefore, we encourage funding for preschool programs so that every eligible child has access to our quality programs.

In the capital budget, as student enrollment projections show continuing growth, we believe schools, including a ninth elementary school, should be built and timed to open in such a way that minimizes the use of trailers and keeps instruction inside schools.

The items mentioned here are not intended to be exhaustive. As the budget is prepared we surely expect other items to emerge as important for the educational success of our students, and we look forward to hearing more about them in the coming months.

We encourage you to communicate early and often with city and county staff, elected officials, and the community regarding the needs of the school division, using solid justifications and data to back up budget requests.

We understand that this budget of need will require significant resources. We vow to support the budget by communicating early and often to our members and the community about the need to contact city and county representatives, urging them to fully fund the budget proposed by the School Board.

We look forward to working with you during the budget process.

Please contact us if you require any assistance.

Mike Ludwick