The Virgin Islands Board of Education met via videoconference Wednesday to approve its Fiscal Year 2014 budget proposal, which is almost $170,000 less than its 2013 budget.
The total proposed budget of $3,253,245 reflects a governmentwide 5 percent cut mandated by the governor. The majority of those savings will come from cuts to the board’s scholarship program.
Executive Director Carol Henneman explained that there was still confusion about whether the 8 percent salary cuts implemented in 2012 would still be in effect during the 2014 fiscal year.
Henneman said the Office of Management and Budget suggested they would be, but she pointed out that there was no legal basis for those cuts as yet on the books. The current cuts are set to expire this summer.
“Unless the Legislature acts to extend the cuts, [OMB] has no legal authority to impose those cuts past June 30,” she told the board members.
Henneman said that they had prepared a second 2014 budget proposal with the 8 percent cuts included, though she encouraged the board members to submit the uncut budget proposal “unless we are told legally that something else has to happen.”
At stake are $51,816 in wages and $13,032 in fringe benefits.
If the pay cuts are rescinded, the board’s personal services budget request will be $757,860 and the fringe benefits request will be $257,951. If the cuts are extended, personal services will be $706,044 and fringe benefits will be $244,919.
The personal services budget in FY13 was $750,168 and the fringe benefits budget was $246,955.
Regardless of how the pay cut issue is resolved, the total amount requested by the board will be the same. The Office of Management and Budget set $3,253,245 as the maximum possible allocation for the V.I. Board of Education in 2014, and the board is requesting every penny in both budget proposals.
The difference in the budgets is in the amount allocated for the board’s scholarship program. If the pay cuts are rescinded, the entirety of the $64,848 in disputed wages and benefits will be deducted from the scholarship budget, decreasing it to $1,436,021. If the pay cuts are extended, the scholarship budget will be $1,500,869.
Both scenarios represent a steep cut to the program, which received $1,631,522 in FY13.
Laurie Isaac, the board’s director of business and management, suggested an accounting maneuver that may spare the scholarship budget any further cuts in the coming fiscal year.
She said that, in the past, some of the funds for the program have been requested through the BoE operating budget and the rest through a separate “special legislative territorial scholarship program allotment.”
Isaac suggested that this year, all money for scholarships be sought through the special allotment, because any future budget cuts will first come from the board’s operating budget. If the scholarship funds come through a separate piece of legislation, they may be spared.
Voting to approve the budget were board members Judy Gomez, Terrence Joseph, Arah Lockhart, Nandi Sekou and Chairman Oswin Sewer.
Members Winona Hendricks, Mary Moorhead and Martial Webster abstained from the vote. Debra Smith-Watlington was absent.
The budget proposal will be submitted to the Senate for consideration. The amount the Senate ultimately allocates to the BoE could vary widely from what the board requested.