The Rappahannock County School Board last Thursday decided to keep one of the two teaching positions that Superintendent Dr. Robert Chappell had proposed be cut in the 2008-2009 school year.

The board's action came two days after a public hearing in which county residents urged the school board to prioritize education in the draft school budget that it will send to the Board of Supervisors for approval.

Now only six positions – one teacher, two aides and three transportation staff – are earmarked for the knife next year. The board had previously approved all seven of Chappell's proposed staff cuts.

Chappell has said that he hopes to accomplish the reduction through attrition.

At the March 20 work session where the board decided to keep the position, Chappell told the school board that his recommendation to nix the jobs was based on an in-the-works plan to reduce staffing in the face of dropping student enrollment – something called for in a report made following a voluntary state review of the schools conducted this past October and November.

The teaching position was too be pulled from either the kindergarten or the first grade at Rappahannock County Elementary School.

"There has been speculation about why I proposed staffing reductions to the school board," Chappell told the board at the work session.

Chappell announced his proposed cuts early last week when he detailed planned staffing and operations changes that would result in cost savings of $415,000 for the 2008-2009 school year. Chappell had already worked the $415,000 savings into the budget that he proposed earlier to the school board, but he had not specified how he would accomplish the cost reduction.

Along with reducing staff, Chappell also recommended decreasing the number of bus and car routes and reorganizing certain programs to save money.

Tacking the teaching position back on to the budget will drop the amount of cost savings resulting from Chappell's recommendations to $358,000, according to a press release provided by school officials.

At the work session the school board also decided to increase the amount of funds devoted to fuel costs by $10,000 because of the rising price of oil.

With all of the changes to the budget – including a windfall savings of $70,000 because an earlier insurance quote turned out to be too high the board approved a new bottom line for its draft budget of $12,063,799. The new budget total is $33,135 dollars less than the budget this school year.

Chappell's draft budget originally totaled about $500 less than the current year's budget, bucking a long trend of growing education spending.

State funding for Rappahannock schools is expected to be even lower than what school officials had expected, falling to $443,786 less than the amount the schools receive this year, according to a press release provided by school officials. In February, Chappell estimated that state funding would drop by $381,993 next year, or nearly 12 percent.

Largely because of the reduced state funding, county dollars will likely be upped in the school budget. The school board approved an increase of $472,541 – or about 6 percent – from the current year at the work session. The figure also represents an increase of $26,160 from the amount Superintendent Chappell proposed in the draft budget he presented to the school board last month.

Come Monday, the school board's draft budget will be in the hands of the Board of Supervisors. The supervisors will decide in May how much county funding to provide for the schools.