PWCS Provides List of Programs including Costs, Benefits

To balance the budget, the Prince William County School Board faces the challenge of making $17.5 million in cuts and eliminations to its FY16 budget.

In order to meet this challenge, School Board members have sought community input.

While the community members certainly have their opinions on the budget, they do not always have the facts at their disposal. To help remedy this, the PWCS website recently posted a list of non-maditory strategic programs that could possibly be eliminated. It is the same document that School Board members received from Prince William County Schools.

Director of Communications, Phil Kavits, said there are various reasons that people may be interested in the cost of the strategic programs.

“Certainly there are people who want to know: is my program on the chopping block? Or, I have no doubt, we have employees looking at it, saying ‘what could it mean for my job?’” Kavits said.

The document, organized as a table, names approximately 400 strategic programs that are not mandated by the state nor Federal government. The table also provides their cost, and in a succinct way, describes their benefit to the school system.

Kavits said it took the staff a long time to compile these items, but that did it because it was a directive  issued by the School Board so that they could find programs to eliminate in order to fund the $17.5 shortfall in the budget.

"As Walts said last night, 'these are not viewed as discretionary items,'" Kavits said. "They support the School Board's strategic plan. They have a reason for being in the budget."

In fact, reading through the list, there seems to be a compelling reason to keep every program. However, there is where the challenge lies.

Kavits points out that some programs, such as the business partnership, incur a cost for the school division, but that cost is greatly outweighed by the money the program brings in.

Armed with this document, citizen should be better informed and thus offer compelling arguments to their school board members as to which programs they feel can be cut or eliminated.

Here is the link to the list once more. 

Now, that you have the information, tell us what program you would choose to eliminate. 

This article was updated as of 5:26 p.m., Tuesday, after having a conversation with Communications Director Phil Kavits. No corrections were made. However, more information was included.