Arlington County teachers would get pay increases and arriving immigrant high school students would get additional teachers, counseling and summer classes under a proposed $300 million budget announced yesterday by School Superintendent Robert G. Smith.
Concerned over the uncertainty of state funding because of the economic downturn, Smith said he would place $5 million in a reserve fund so the 19,097-student school system could start to build a buffer and avoid cutting programs in the future. Fairfax and Loudoun school officials have also included such funds in recent proposed budgets.
The budget Smith proposed for the fiscal year beginning July 1 would be about 8 percent larger than this year's.
A teacher pay increase would put the base salary for a teacher with a master's degree at $40,000, a jump from the current pay of $37,920. The master's step was the focus because 70 percent of current teachers in the school system have a master's degree, Smith said.
Teachers at the top of the scale would also see an increase, from $71,796 to $75,898 for those with master's degrees.
The increases are part of the school board's effort to adopt a three-phase "Teacher Excellence Initiative." That plan includes money in the proposed budget for stipends for teacher mentors and a reduction in class size for kindergarten and fourth and fifth grades.
"I believe we have some real encouraging developments in student achievement. And teacher development is the most important variable in this," Smith said. "Teachers in our society are undervalued, and we want to pay them more."
Marjorie McCreery, director of the Arlington Education Association, pointed out that teachers under this budget would also be asked to work four more days than last year, and she said she would like to see bigger pay increases because the cost of housing in Arlington is higher than in some outer suburbs. She said Arlington teachers also have a more challenging commute -- high schools start during rush hour, a result of last year's change in the start times.
"I just worry that we need to stay competitive with other school districts," McCreery said.
The focus on eliminating the gap in achievement on standardized tests between white students and minority students is another highlight of the budget, Smith said.
The school system is one of the most diverse in the region, with students from 102 countries speaking 82 languages. About 44 percent of students speak English as a second language.
Smith has made closing the gap in scores and helping minority students succeed in learning English two of his top goals. The budget, therefore, includes $62,400 for additional ninth-grade reading classes to help those who need it.
There will also be money for full-time minority achievement coordinators at Washington-Lee and Wakefield high schools, the secondary schools with the largest populations of immigrant and minority students. The coordinators will work on getting more students participating in extracurricular activities and enrolling in higher-level courses, two issues that students and parents have said need improvement and more funding.
At a cost of $260,000, five teachers will be added for those teenage second-language learners who arrive here late, struggling to learn English and graduate from high school by the time they are 22, Smith said.
There will also be resource counselors hired to help with dropout prevention and to help older students adjust to life at school.
A public hearing on the budget will be Feb. 28. The Arlington School Board is scheduled to vote on it March 5. The County Board will vote on the budget in mid-April.
