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Money is tight. Everyone from the Charlotte County School Board to the Board of Supervisors understands that fact. As a result, Charlotte school district officials came to the board with a very small request for the budget. They need help with some health insurance costs. 

The two groups held a joint budget work session on Tuesday, March 18. Charlotte County Administrator Dan Witt emphasized Charlotte staff are still trying to go over the data collected and come up with a reasonable tax rate to propose to supervisors. And now that the governor has made his own amendments to the state budget, it’ll be at least another few weeks before we know how much the state will be contributing, to schools or the county in general. 

“This has been a challenging budget for us,” Witt said. “The state, we don’t know what they’re doing, which is nothing new. Also, two weeks ago, Dominion called me and announced that four of our big solar projects, which we were expecting revenue from, are moving (back) to either 2030 or 2031. I’m working with Dominion, trying to look at other options because I know schools, rescue squad (have needs but) the county can’t print money. We’re trying to figure it out.”

Charlotte school district wants help to keep teachers

School board members and superintendent Robbie Mason said they recognize the problems facing Charlotte County. And they want to be part of the solution, which they feel has been the case, through the academic performance of students and the teachers who helped them achieve those scores. 

Take for example the fact Charlotte County Public Schools is currently ranked first in all of Region 8 for reading, writing, math, science and history. Overall, the district ranks 21st in the state when it comes to test scores. Also, students at Randolph-Henry High who aren’t going to college have earned a total of 209 certifications, qualifying them to start in a specific career. 

For the third straight year, the school district’s pass rate in reading is higher than the state average. For the third straight year, math classes did the same thing. And for the third straight, the school district outperformed the state average in both history and science pass rates on their respective SOLs. 

Breaking down the data

So let’s go through this one at a time. Again, this is the raw pass or fail rates, not accreditation scores. A total of 78% of students in Charlotte County who took the test passed reading, while the state average was at 73%. In math, the state average pass rate was 71%, while 80% of Charlotte students succeeded. For science, 74% of Charlotte students passed, compared to the 68% state average.

Finally, across the board in history, the Virginia average has dropped in recent years, with just 65% of students passing. For Charlotte County schools, the reverse was true, as the pass rate continued to climb. In 21-22, 70% of Charlotte students passed history. Last year, that rose up to 74% and this time, it climbed again to 78%. Mason praised the hard work of his team, to not just show constant growth, but also achieve pass rates nearly 13% above the state average. 

In addition to all this, Bacon District Elementary was one of just 92 schools across the state to earn the Virginia Board of Education’s Highest Achievement Award this year. In order to make this list, a school has to perform higher than the state standard in reading, math and science in the Standards of Learning tests. That goes for all student groups across the school. Also, the school in question has to be rated better than the state average in the graduation and dropout rate, as well as chronic absenteeism.

It takes good teachers to achieve this on a regular basis. And that’s the school board’s concern. They’re afraid, as the lowest paying district in the region, it won’t be long before teachers head out for different options. 

“Our priority right now is paying our teachers,” Charlotte County School Board Chairman Scott Hamlett said. “We’re number one in Region 8 in all academics and that’s because of our faculty and staff. That’s not an easy thing to do.”

He also pointed out that the district will soon need to start hiring more teachers, as several current ones have been at their school more than 25 years and will be retiring in the next few years.  

“We have the highest performing teachers and the lowest paid (teachers) in the region,” Mason said. “We’re still 12 out of 12.” 

One more step for Charlotte school district

So that’s step one. The district officials would like to be able to increase teacher pay, to make sure Charlotte stays competitive with the others in the region. Step two is a bit more involved. 

The school district has found itself struggling with increased costs when it comes to health insurance premiums. From 2018 until now, the rates have pretty much remained the same for the school district. However, with this year’s increase, they need to find $300,000 more to absorb the increase. 

Mason said in many ways, absorbing this is more critical than giving people a raise. What he’s afraid of is a raise comes down funded by the state, but the increase in health insurance premiums eats it all, so employees don’t actually get a benefit. The district isn’t asking for the full $300,000 to come from the county. They’re asking for $90,000, to try and at least absorb the health insurance increase for teachers. 

“Anything that you’re able to do to help us, that would certainly be a big deal for our folks,” Mason told supervisors. 

Nothing was decided during the meeting, as this was just meant to be a presentation of the current situation. The school board is working this week and members said they should be able to deliver a full proposed budget to the county by April 1.