Reply to How would you cut the budget?

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[quote=Anonymous]The FCPS messaging about cutting the FY2026 budget isn't exactly accurate. Fairfax County board of supervisors is offering a $150 million INCREASE. FCPS claims they can't do without $300 million. Sorry, but most Virginia universities are expecting 10-15% budget cuts in FY2026, most haven't been allowed to raise tuition for years, and those who aren't expecting budget cuts are expecting flat budgets. FCPS is not even getting a flat budget--they're getting an INCREASE. Public schools should be able to make their own plans for flat budgets where they also give their employees raises. This happens ALL THE TIME in higher education and at state (and federal) agencies.

Budget transparency IS a huge issue. Apparently FCPS spends a ton of money on textbooks, but textbooks aren't in the schools, and individual schools have to buy their own textbooks now due to their changes in textbook policies? Granted, textbook companies have been moving everything online to get ongoing subscription revenue streams, so being able to find a company that just sells a print textbook is increasingly difficult. Additionally, textbook costs have been spiraling for decades well above inflation, which is why so many universities have been trying to push for Open Educational Resources (since college kids don't eat in order to pay for books that aren't actually used in their classrooms by their professors). I'm not against online, but the myriad of conflicting instructional strategies, and early career teachers who can't answer a single question about those instructional strategies or tell a parent what the curriculum actually is? that's frustrating to parents, and also explains why so many of us have to engage in after-schooling or pay tutors to get our kids at grade level. FCPS aren't "awesome"--we just have more parents willing to take on the educational support needed to keep our kids at grade level, so our scores look great.

Also, PTOs are paying for most of the technology in the ES classrooms (at least this is what's claimed by my ES)? So where does the FCPS technology budget go??? Parents already have to pay extra to get "basics" in their schools via PTO fundraising. I don't need to pay more taxes, and more to the PTO, while not getting raises, or potentially having one of us lose of our jobs, because FCPS administrators aren't capable of higher math. (Not a troll, but am a Democrat who doesn't believe in blank checks)[/quote]

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