As staffing numbers drop due to resignations and retirements, recruiting new teachers is becoming a major challenge for the Education Department while budgets continue to be cut, Acting Commissioner Donna Frett-Gregory stressed during Senate budget hearings Tuesday.

In fact, the Department of Education’s ability to adequately staff schools in the upcoming school year presents a significant concern, she said.

Nationally school districts are aggressively pursuing qualified candidates through measures such as offering signup bonuses, stipends and housing allowances, she said. Because funding is not likely to increase during the territory’s fiscal crisis and recruiting from the mainland is difficult, Education is focusing on employing applicants from the University of the Virgin Islands to meet its needs.

“However, the demand is greater than the available pool of applicants,” Frett-Gregory said.

Sen. Nereida "Nellie" Rivera-O’Reilly asked, "What are we doing to attract teachers?"

Frett-Gregory said, "We are unable to attract teachers from the mainland primarily because of our economics – the cost of living is very high, particularly compared to the salaries we are offering." She said the department has frequently been well along in the job application process and "thinking we have one," when the applicant does more research on the price of local rents, the costs of groceries and utilities, "and we don’t hear from them again," she said.

Keeping teachers is similarly difficult, she said.

"The key to retention would be what?" O’Reilly asked.

"More money," said Acting Human Resources Director Nicole Jacobs.

Frett-Gregory presented a proposed V.I. General Fund budget Tuesday to the Senate Finance Committee for Fiscal Year 2014 of $157.9 million, a reduction of $4.8 million or almost 3 percent from the previous year.

The proposed budget allocates more than $91 million to fund 83 exempt positions and 2,319 classified positions throughout the territory’s schools and Education offices.

Wages and salaries account for $91.2 million of the General Fund budget, and Medicare, Social Security and benefits eat up another $35.7 million, for some 83 exempt and 2,319 classified government jobs. Some $14.1 million will go to utilities, $14 million for "mandatory costs," including bussing students, janitorial services and security guards. And another $2.9 million is slated for materials and supplies.

Education is also requesting a miscellaneous budget of $5 million, with $3 million slated for school maintenance; $700,000 for V.I. Career and Technical Education; $651,000 for track and field maintenance’ and smaller sums for other programs and scholarships.

Frett-Gregory requested a lump-sum budget.

The department also anticipates about $43.2 million in federal funds for FY14.

According to data supplied by Frett-Gregory, of the 15,192 students who attended public school in 2012-2013, 7,276 were in the St. Croix district and 7,916 in the St. Thomas-St. John district. Of the 995 students enrolled in grade 12 at the beginning of the last school year, 914 graduated and 315 graduated had a grade point average of 3.0 and above.

Another 72 students received GEDs and 113 graduated from the adult continuing education program, she said.

The Office of the Public Defender, which provides legal representation to the indigent, is also underfunded and overstretched, Acting Public Defender Robert Leycock told the committee. Leycock presented a budget request of $4.5 million – roughly $1 million more than the governor’s proposed budget.

The office is "very mindful of the hard economic conditions facing the Government of the Virgin Islands and we are willing to do our part," Leycock said. "However, as arrests increase, so does the demand for public defender services. All persons accused of crimes have a Sixth Amendment Constitutional right to counsel pursuant to Gideon vs. Wainright, which requires effective representation of indigent defendants," he said.

The office’s caseload is currently 1,197, with 488 on St. Croix and 709 in the St. Thomas/St. John district. There is a substantial and growing backlog of cases, not just for the Office of the Public Defender, but also for the courts as a whole, he said.

Increasing delays between arrest and trial are themselves creating a legal and moral problem, according to Emile Henderson III, chairman of the governing board of the Office of the Territorial Public Defender.

There are young men who are picked up for marijuana and minor crimes, and if they cannot afford an attorney and bail, they may sit in jail awaiting trial longer than the statutory maximum sentence for the offense, without ever being convicted, Henderson said.

Several senators, including O’Reilly, Sens. Donald Cole and Clarence Payne III, expressed general support for increased funding for the office. Nothing specific was proposed during the hearing regarding funding.

No votes were taken at the information gathering budget hearing. After each agency discusses its budget before the Finance Committee, the committee and then the full Legislature will debate, amend and vote on a series of pieces of legislation that comprise the budget in September.