The Roanoke City Public School Board will vote Tuesday on a budget that would balance out a $16 million shortfall by eliminating an estimated 150 staff positions and cutting student programs, transportation services and other operations.
The city council approved a new school funding policy in January, as the city grapples with its own budget shortfalls.
The new funding policy means the division will get less money than it was accustomed to receiving, and less than it says it needs, even as the overall amount that the division is receiving annually is still expected to increase over time as city revenues increase. The division will also not be able to rely on its fund balance to cover a shortfall, which it did last year to avoid $10 million in cuts. The division’s general fund budget for this fiscal year is $272 million, and the city’s contribution is $106.9 million.
The proposed budget includes about $12 million in staffing cuts and about $4 million in other cuts.
“This shortfall is not the result of overspending or mismanagement on the part of RCPS,” Superintendent Verletta White said during a Feb. 24 school board budget workshop meeting. “However, the policy changes, combined with flat funding and the required return of the fund balance, removed a financial cushion and created this abrupt financial gap.”
The division returned almost $21 million of its fund balance to the city in fiscal year 2025, at the city’s direction, according to RCPS spokesperson Claire Mitzel. She said an additional $5.25 million in previously committed funds will be returned to the city during fiscal year 2026.
Mayor Joe Cobb said that while he understands the feelings that the changes were abrupt, “we’re really trying to be realistic with the funding we are able to provide based on our revenue and our own budget adjustments.” He said the schools and the city are both in a difficult position.
In a Feb. 10 school board meeting budget presentation, RCPS estimated that the existing $10 million shortfall, an extra $8 million of projected expenditures and a projected increase of $1 million in city funding will leave a budget variance of $16 million to make up.
Mitzel said personnel and program-based decisions will not be made Tuesday night, but will be discussed as the budget develops further before final adoption.
2% raises considered for division employees on the table as positions are cut
The division estimates cutting about 150 positions in the upcoming year — about 5% of the division’s total staff, Kathleen Jackson, the division’s chief financial officer, shared in a Feb. 10 budget presentation. Personnel and benefits make up 75% of RCPS costs, and cuts will impact all levels of staffing, Jackson said.
At a budget workshop two weeks later, Jackson showed the board a proposed $2.5 million in cuts to central office positions and $6.2 million in cuts to school-based positions. The division does not know yet exactly which positions will be cut, she said in a recent interview.
Among the proposed cuts are an estimated 12 positions that would be eliminated through the loss of six of the division’s nine 3-year-old preschool classes. Between five and nine additional positions could be cut depending on what the division decides to do about PLATO, its elementary gifted program.
The goal is to eliminate positions that are already vacant or will become vacant before the next school year, Jackson said. She said she hopes that the human resources department can speed up the process of issuing contracts and renewals for next year to have an accurate count of who is planning to come back versus who is not.
Even with these cuts, the division is considering 2% raises for employees. Mitzel said if the board went for the raises, RCPS would receive $1.6 million in state funding, but the raises would cost RCPS an additional $1.7 million.
Jackson said in a recent interview that with a reduction in the workforce, fewer people will be doing the same amount of work, and the division has to think about retention — and how its pay compares to neighboring divisions.
If the board moves forward without the 2% raises, that would save about 20 positions from being cut, Jackson said.
“If we can’t do a raise this year and our neighbors can, then that puts us at even more of a disadvantage in retaining our teachers and recruiting new teachers to come work here if they could potentially make the same or better somewhere down the road,” Jackson said.
Sample budgets presented by Jackson also include five-day furloughs for employees at the level of central office coordinator and above, which is listed as saving the division about $152,000. Mitzel said there are approximately 60 positions that could be affected.
Potential cuts to elementary gifted program
The division is considering cuts to Pupils Learning Appropriately Together, or PLATO, the gifted program that currently serves grades three through five at Fairview and Highland Park elementary schools.
Mitzel said 148 students currently participate in PLATO, which is a full-time, full-day program.
Jackson Gunter, a third-grade student in the PLATO program at Highland Park, spoke along with some of his classmates to the school board during its Feb. 10 meeting and asked the board to keep the program’s funding intact. Jackson has also spoken before the city council to advocate for his school’s playground.
“To me, it feels like a real community where I belong and am accepted for where I am,” Jackson said. “And that makes me excited to go to school every day.”
His mother, Brianna Gunter, also spoke during the meeting, saying that her son’s motivation in school suffered without PLATO while he was in regular classes in second grade.
“He is eager to return to school each day. Our responsibility is not to level down opportunity, but to protect what truly matters,” she said.
RCPS is looking at multiple options for the future of the PLATO program. Eliminating PLATO altogether would save $1.1 million and cut nine staffing positions, according to a sample budget presented by Jackson on Feb. 24.
If PLATO classes were held at one elementary school instead of the current two, with transportation provided, the division could save $466,000 and cut five positions.
The division is also looking at keeping PLATO at both locations, but cutting transportation for the program altogether. Board chair Franny Apel said during the Feb. 24 budget workshop that it’s worth asking if parents would opt out if they had to bear the burden of transportation, making the PLATO argument a “moot point.”
“I really do believe we are trying to meet the needs of our students and don’t want to see the lights go out on a number of students because they are not getting the appropriate level of instruction that they need,” Apel said.
School board member Diedre Trigg said during the discussion that even if PLATO programming is cut, students will be successful — “We do have great teachers at their home schools.”
Potential changes include cuts to activity buses, learning cottages
The division is also looking at cutting activity buses, which take students home from after-school activities on weekdays. According to Chris Perkins, chief operations officer for the division, what RCPS normally offers is above what is required by the Virginia Standards of Learning — the state’s minimum requirements for a school division, which RCPS officials have said are really less than what’s needed for a division to thrive.
Perkins said the activity buses serve an average of 173 students daily. Cutting the service would save the division $350,000 a year.
The division had planned to install learning cottages, or trailers, at both high schools to help alleviate overcrowding in the short term before an eventual high school expansion.
The division originally had requested $8.3 million to install and maintain the trailers; the city council appropriated $4.3 million. Perkins said the division would face millions of dollars in ongoing costs, and therefore isn’t proposing to continue with the trailers at this time.
Jackson said additional cuts would have to be made in future years to make up for “pretty significant ongoing costs” that the trailers would bring.
Perkins also presented the idea of cutting other transportation, including eliminating PLATO routes and reducing 3-year-old preschool routes, as well as deferring facility and grounds maintenance, reducing funding for athletics supplies and delaying an equipment upgrade, including additional weapons detection systems. Proposed operations-based cost reductions add up to just over $3 million.
On Feb. 24, the school board discussed a four-day school week, which would save up to $1 million, but decided it needed more time to research the idea.
Another change for the next school year is transitioning all middle schools to a five-block schedule.
With block scheduling, instead of seven shorter classes that last 45 minutes each, students have five longer blocks that are each 75 minutes long. Students take core classes daily, and elective classes rotate between “A” and “B” days, allowing for fewer teachers and fewer sections. This is how both Patrick Henry and William Fleming high schools operate, Mitzel said.
Lucy Addison and James Breckinridge middle schools have been operating on block schedules since 2023, and transitioning all five middle schools to block scheduling would save the division about $2 million in the first year, Archie Freeman, chief instructional and administrative officer with RCPS, said at the Feb. 24 workshop.
This scheduling adds up to approximately 75 additional hours of instructional time per year and allows for fewer daily transitions for students, Freeman said.
Moving forward with a ‘new budget reality’
RCPS has repeatedly referred to the changes of the last year as a “new reality” for the division and its finances.
The division knew that the city was looking at changing its funding policy, Jackson said, but did not expect the changes to be “to this level” in one year.
“Certainly that would be the hope that maybe this is a temporary challenge and that there will be brighter days ahead for our city and state in terms of how they’re able to fund education in the future,” Jackson said. “But, of course, we can’t assume that or count on that at this point. … We are adjusting as best we can.”
By fiscal year 2029, RCPS estimates a cumulative difference of almost $39 million in local funding from the policy change.
With the new formula, in fiscal year 2026, RCPS estimates receiving $7 million less from the city than it would have received had the city kept the previous funding formula, even as the city’s overall contribution to the schools is expected to continue growing gradually under the new formula.
The budget that will be approved Tuesday is only a preliminary budget, Jackson said. The final budget may change based on revenue estimates and the approved state budget.
The division is required to submit a budget estimate to the city by March 15, which she said is written in the city charter and in the school board policy. The city council will approve the school division’s budget when it approves its own in the spring.
Tuesday’s school board meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at 201 Campbell Ave., in the William B. Robertson Building. The agenda for the meeting can be viewed here, and for those who cannot attend the meeting in person, school board meetings are livestreamed on YouTube.
___________________
Correction 9:30 a.m. March 10: The school division’s general fund budget for this fiscal year is $272 million, while the city’s contribution is $106.9 million. The total budget amount was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.