CEO--Community Engaged Openly

March 7, 2007

Dear School Supporters,

It was a night in which we all can truly be proud to be residents of Williamsburg and James City County.

On March 6, current and former WJC students, teachers, parents, William and Mary student mentors, the WJC Education Association, the League of Women Voters Education Committee, Support Schools Now and other concerned citizens rallied to support the current full day alternative education program--the Center for Educational Opportunites (CEO).

Applause filled the packed room, with people overflowing into the hallway, after each speaker passionately spoke up for students too often left without a voice. CEO now has another meaning: Community Engaged Openly.

My remarks for Support Schools Now are below.

The School Board will be discussing CEO at a special meeting on March 13. If you have not already made your voice heard regarding CEO or other parts of the schools' budget, make your voice heard now.

CLICK HERE to send a message to the School Board, Board of Supervisors and City Council. They all need to hear from you.

Also, mark APRIL 10, 7 p.m., on your calendars. That is the night the JCC Board of Supervisors will have its public hearing on the county budget.

If the schools are to get the funds they need, as many voices as possible will be needed that night, APRIL 10. PLAN TO ATTEND.

Thank you for supporting our schools.

Mike Ludwick

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Chair Koch, Board members, Mr. Burckbuchler, my name is Mike Ludwick founder of Support Schools Now, here tonight with two primary messages: “Scrub the Base and Go For It.”

Before I explain that let me say there are lot of good things in the budget proposals. The staff to student ratios are held steady. A 3% salary raise seems to keep pace with others around us. Absorbing about half of the health insurance increases is helpful. Just beware of passing health cost along to staff because you may end up canceling out salary increases, especially for those at the bottom.

The Superintendent’s budget and additional needs in Option B together are your “budget of need”. Items in Option B: expanded preK, replacement buses, replacement equipment for schools--these are all needs.

Putting the two together means you have a $2.7 shortfall.

Obviously one item that needs to be put back in the budget is CEO. Others have been more eloquent I could have been on this subject. The community needs to come together to find a location for this program.

If you add CEO back in, the shortfall is $3.7M. How do you close this gap? Scrub the base and Go For It.

Scrub the base means look at additions made into the base budget last year that could be pulled out this year.

A few examples: At your last meeting you rightly dug deeply into the budget of academic services. In the last budget cycel you added $420K for textbook adoption, $100K for equipment, $72K for staff development to the base budget of Academic Services. Now the superintendent is asking for $300K more in academic services . Do you really need to add that $300K on top of what was added to the base last year?

The superintendent did include a $1.5M personnel adjustment that reduced the base. Why $1.5M? Could this number be increased? Tonight in your monthly bills and payroll you see an example of this because it is proposed that you redirect $450K of current funds out of personnel and benefits into band uniforms, text books, equipment at Warhill and Matoka.

Earlier in the year you had $400K in VRS savings that your redirected into Special education and band and athletic uniforms at Warhill. Back out that VRS saving out of the base budget. Otherwise you are adding new VRS money needed on top of funds you didn’t need this year.

After you scrub the base, then "Go For It."

If your budget is $3.7M over what the county and city say they have, and you can justify what are you requesting, Go For It, adopt it. Then it’s up to you to make the case and up to the community to go to the county and city and ask for the money.

The county and the city must face the consequences of the past poor leadership of the JCC Board of Supervisors whose failure to acknowledge growth delayed the third high school. Not only did the delay cost millions of dollars, but had it opened last year, we would not be faced with a triple whammy of having two new schools opening at the same time and new growth on top of it.

Scrub the base, go for it, and the community will back you up. Thank you.