Staunton schools press city for staff raises, warn Shelburne addition funding shortfall

Staunton City Schools officials told a joint budget work session on Jan. 23 that the division’s immediate budget priority is raises for teachers and staff and that recent cost pressures leave little room for other spending.

“Right now we really have one priority for our budget this year and that's raises for our staff,” said Dr. Garrett Smith, superintendent of Staunton City Schools, explaining that salary commitments plus the division’s share of higher insurance premiums consume nearly all of the school division’s guaranteed revenue-share from the city.

The schools’ presentation to Staunton City Council and city staff outlined three reasons for pressure on the division’s budget: an outdated state staffing-based funding formula that the superintendent said does not fully fund state “standards of quality,” recent changes increasing required English-language learner staffing ratios, and post-pandemic growth in students with intensive needs. Dr. Smith described how state proposals that reference a uniform “3% raise” for teachers translate to far smaller increases locally because the commonwealth does not fully fund the workforce the state expects divisions to maintain.

That fiscal squeeze is complicating plans for the Shelburne addition, a multi-phase construction project the school division says has escalated in estimated cost from roughly $10–$11 million at initial planning to $14–$15 million as construction costs rose. Dr. Smith and other board members told council the city funds school capital projects through the city’s capital improvement plan…