Stafford Superintendent's Budget Asks County to Fund Just Two Investments: Employee Compensation and New School Operations
Daniel Smith presented his "targeted" budget proposal on Monday.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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This article was corrected on February 4 at 8:45 pm to say that the district is supporting a “3.75% average increase across all employees,” not a 3.75% increase for all employees as originally reported, and to clarify that the elementary interventionist positions are currently grant-funded. The Advance regrets the errors.
In his budget presentation on Monday, Stafford school division superintendent Daniel Smith took a different approach than that of his predecessors.
Instead of framing the division’s local funding request as filling the gap between identified needs and expected revenues, he tied the local ask for fiscal year 2027 (July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027) to just two initiatives—$8 million for salary raises for staff, and $10.2 million for operating expenses for the three new schools opening in August.
“We are strategically leveraging other revenue streams and maximizing efficiency,” Smith said during a virtual special meeting of the School Board on Monday. “We are asking the county to fund just two targeted items: salary increases and the cost of new schools. This will allow us to ensure that these resources will be allocated where they will have greatest impact.”
The $8 million for compensation will support a 3.75% average increase across all employees—in line with what county staff are expected to receive—and will raise the starting salary for teachers by $2,300 to $52,900.
This is still lower than the starting salary in Stafford’s neighboring divisions, Smith noted. Spotsylvania is proposing a starting salary of $54,902, and Prince William’s current starting salary is $62,562.
The $10.2 million for the new schools will support the staffing, utilities, custodial services, instructional support, and basic infrastructure required to operate Hartwood High School, and Falls Run and Crow’s Nest elementary schools.
Smith said about 300 existing employees will be moving to the new schools and about 87 new full-time positions are required to fully staff them. When the schools are open, they will reduce overcrowding at the elementary level by 13.5% and at the high school level by almost 17%.
Efficiency, intentionality, and transparency were the three key words running through Smith’s budget proposal.
“The question is not ‘What do we need?’ but ‘What can we do without,’” he said.
Smith highlighted the fact that Stafford’s budget is built from the ground-up every year and said that over the past five years, the base budget has been cut by $6 million.
“This year, we made base budget reductions totaling $2.2 million,” he said. “At this point, we have pared, cut, reallocated, and patched as much as we can. We are as efficient as we can be.”
Smith said that according to a recent report from the Virginia Department of Education, Stafford ranks 121 out of 131 school divisions in terms of funding levels. That makes it “one of the most efficient divisions in the state with regard to funding,” Smith said while emphasizing recent academic successes, including an 80% percent improvement on standards of learning tests; outperforming the state average end-of-course reading and writing tests; and having four out of the five high schools rated as “Distinguished” by the VDOE.
Along with these successes, Smith said the division “can and should move forward,” which the funding request for fiscal year 2027 will help it to do.
In order to limit the local to ask to just the cost of salary increases and new school operating costs, the budget proposes to use $2.5 million in year-end savings from fiscal year 2025 to purchase six new buses and replace school and security hardware.
It also proposes to invest $4.5 million in state “At-Risk” funding to support roles that “directly improve student outcomes and school operations,” according to a press release from the school division.
These investments include continued funding of elementary interventionist positions, which have been grant-funded. Interventionists are school-based specialists whose jobs include targeted academic intervention, data monitoring, staff support, and liaising with families.
Smith said that early intervention has already resulted in an 8 percentage point reduction from last school year to this year in the number of kindergarten students identified as at risk of falling behind in reading, and a 9-point reduction in first graders.
State At-Risk funding will also go towards hiring school security officers and deans of students for the middle schools.
Stafford is the only Fredericksburg-area school division that does not have school security officers at the middle schools, Smith said. Middle school deans of students will also play a role in school security and overall climate by overseeing discipline, mediation, and restorative practices and removing that burden from teachers.
All of these positions “have already demonstrated measurable returns at other grade levels by increasing instructional time, improving attendance and behavior supports, and accelerating academic growth, particularly in reading and mathematics, while reducing long-term costs through early intervention,” the press release states.
All together, the proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2027 is $529.3 million. That includes $21.6 million in new state funding, based on Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s outgoing budget proposal; $1 million in new federal funding; and the $18.2 million new local ask.
There will be a public hearing on the budget proposal at a February 10 meeting of the School Board. The board will hold a budget work session on February 19 and is expected to approve the budget that evening.
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