FCTA board members attended today's Fairfax County Public Schools budget forum, held at Marshall High School.
The FCTA asked why the school board is urging the supervisors to
raise taxes by $81.9M although only $9M is needed to pay for next
year's expected increase in student enrollment.
The school superintendent acknowledged that the reason is the
increased cost in employee benefits, especially pensions. According to
the schools' proposed FY2011 budget, employee benefits costs are
increasing by $98M, of which $71M is for pensions and another $15M is
for retiree medical benefits.
The school board has been less than straightforward with the
community about this. During her opening remarks at the forum, school
board chairman Kathy Smith talked about cuts to band and sports, and
bigger class sizes, but never acknowledged that the cuts were being
made to pay for increased benefits costs. School board members urged
the audience to ask the supervisors to raise taxes. If taxes are not
raised, then the board will cut band and sports and increase class size
to make the pension payments.
The problem is that while unionized county employees have
pensions, most private-sector taxpayers do not. Is it fair to raise
taxes to fully fund county pensions when taxpayers rely on 401Ks and
those have lost value?
FCTA president Arthur Purves offered a solution based on President
Obama's recommendation that employees accept lower wages so coworkers
would not lose their jobs. Mr. Purves pointed out that $98M is about
eight percent of next year's projected salaries. If the school board
cut salaries by eight percent, then they could fully fund the increased
costs of employee benefits; pensions and retiree medical benefits would
be preserved; there would be no layoffs; band and sports would not be
cut; class size would not increase; and taxpayers, whose 401Ks have
lost value, would not face higher taxes.
In response, school board member Janie Strauss stated that the
board is already considering salary cuts. While there is great
reluctance to cut salaries, one citizen asked if teachers would prefer
keeping their jobs or keeping their pay and benefits. The
superintendent responded that teachers were "50-50".
The FCTA urges citizens to ask their school board members and supervisors if they favor raising taxes to fully fund county union pensions when taxpayers themselves generally do not have pensions but have 401Ks that have lost value. Please forward responses to alerts@fcta.org so we can post them on www.fcta.org. The Fairfax County supervisors will decide on tax increases in mid-April.
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