"The Charlottesville School Board decided Thursday that maintaining competitive teacher salaries and providing an adequate “living wage” for school employees would be its top priorities as it starts developing the division’s budget for fiscal 2007-08.

Ed Gillaspie, director of finance for city schools, presented the board with a timeline of the city’s budget process. The School Board will approve its budget March 1.

Over the last year five years, the city’s teacher salaries have ranked third among the nine jurisdictions in its market. Albemarle and Fluvanna counties have higher salaries.

School Board member Ned Michie emphasized that while all the board members have their own priorities, all will be receptive to the budget ideas of Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins, Gillaspie and other school administrators.

“My No. 1 priority, and I think everyone else’s No. 1 priority, is to support you all and what you think are the things that will increase the achievement of our students,” Michie said, turning to Atkins as he spoke.

Board member Julie Gronlund said that in addition to the priorities outlined by Gillaspie, she would like to look into partnering with Albemarle County’s Newcomer Center, located in the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center. The program is geared toward students whose education has been interrupted and who need an accelerated program to catch up with their peers.

Gronlund and board member Peggy Van Yahres both favored focusing on funding the Extended Day Generates Excellence program, a series of after-school activities and tutoring sessions that involve music, sports, science and film.

Van Yahres said that the program at Buford Middle should be supported especially.

“Adolescence is a time when we lose a lot of children’s interest in school, so Extended Day and other after-school activities are important,” she said.

Atkins also noted that the “Teacher for a New Era” grant will expire this year. She and several board members said they want to continue this program, in which Charlottesville High School history teacher and University of Virginia professor Erika Pierce invites her CHS students to her UVa classes to sample the college experience. To continue the partnership, the division would have to devote to it the cost of two teaching positions." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, November 3, 2006)