An Albemarle County school board member is speaking up about the $3.7 million funding gap the system is facing. Jason Buyaki was the only member to vote against handing off the funding request to the board of supervisors, saying county staff didn't vet potential cuts like it should have.
"I was voting with my principles and that was I think there are inefficiencies to be found," Buyaki told NBC29 Wednesday night, "and that was my one way of communicating to the board that we could do a better job at trying to efficiencies within our line item budget."
At their last meeting, Albemarle County School Board members watched and listened as the school financial staff presented the newest numbers, taking the deficit down from about $4.9 million to about $3.7 million. However, most of that came from reorganizing revenues, not from slashing spending.
"For me, it was a fairly difficult process because I really expected the school leadership to come back with some proposals on where we might make some efficiency cuts and make sure that we're still funding the things that are important to us," Buyaki said.
About half of board members argued that projecting cuts was premature. Those board members said it was smarter to send off the numbers without possible cuts until the state comes back with its finalized budget. The other half, though, said it was disappointing not to see more work go into reducing expenditures.
Buyaki explained he went through the funding request line by line, and found plenty of places to cut spending.
"There are some things in there that are pretty concerning to me," Buyaki mentioned. "We're funding line items, we're putting money into it, we're not spending the money, and we're moving the money elsewhere. And I think that, that to me is more, we need to look at that from an efficiency standpoint and putting the money where it belongs."
Buyaki wants to see more open discussion with staff about potential cuts and how that would impact specific programs and classrooms across the district. He says so far, the board has really only communicated with the central office.
Even Buyaki stressed that the numbers for Albemarle are up in the air, and now it's a waiting game for the schools to see what kind of money comes from Richmond and the board of supervisors.
