Charles City County school officials are considering cutting 10 jobs -- nearly 6 percent of all school positions -- because of decreased funding for fiscal year 2009.

School Superintendent Janet C. Crawley has proposed eliminating six instructional positions, an administrative food-service job, a central-office administrative position and two staff support positions, said Curtis Finney, director of finance for the school division. One of the staff support jobs is part time. The remaining jobs are full time.

Finney said the classroom positions range between pre-kindergarten and high school, including a special-education position. The cuts would include some employees who have said they will not renew their contracts at the end of this school year and others who would like to stay on, Finney said. The school system has about 170 employees altogether.

Crawley had hoped to be able to afford 4.5 percent pay raises for school employees but is now proposing a 2 percent pay increase.

The proposed job cuts, presented to the School Board at a meeting last week, would save the school system about $420,000 but would still leave $52,000 to be cut, Finney said.

"It's difficult because education is so important that you would hate to do anything that would have an impact on any of the instruction," Finney said.

Crawley was out of town this week and could not be reached for comment. Attempts yesterday and Tuesday to reach School Board Chairwoman Barbara C. Crawley also were unsuccessful, as were efforts to reach other School Board members this week.

Charles City's Board of Supervisors last month adopted a county budget for fiscal year 2009 that provides the school system with $6.1 million in county funds. The school system had requested $7.1 million from the county.

The total county budget for fiscal 2009 decreased by nearly 4 percent from the spending plan for the current fiscal year. County officials said they had to cut the budget and raise the real estate tax rate because the county has been spending more than it has been taking in and dipping into its fund balance every fiscal year since 2003.

County Administrator John F. Miniclier Jr. confirmed Tuesday that Janet Crawley sent him a letter dated May 2 asking him to help set up a meeting between supervisors and School Board members before May 20, the date of the next school board meeting.

According to Miniclier, who read the letter over the telephone to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Crawley wrote that the purpose of a meeting would be to "share the deep cuts caused by the significant reduction in local funding to the school system." It was unclear yesterday whether such a meeting would be set.

For fiscal year 2007, Charles City schools had the state's 13th highest ratio of total spending per-pupil out of 132 school divisions in Virginia. The figure was $12,827 per pupil.

The school system did not make federal adequate yearly progress benchmarks during the 2006-07 school year.
Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or rwilliams@timesdispatch.com.