Education

INDEPENDENCE – Grayson County Supervisors have approved a counter offer to the school board following a request of more than $600,000 in additional funding for education.
The school board presented requests for both the current budget (2012-13) and next year’s budget (2013-14) for the supervisors to consider during a joint meeting held last month.

HILLSVILLE  — One Carroll teaching position will be eliminated as a result of a funding shortfall for the tight 2014 budget, schools officials said at their Tuesday board meeting.
For the remainder of the gap, Carroll County Public Schools will share the impact as their health insurance offerings are shifted to less expensive plans.
Many of the school board members sat in the audience during Monday’s Carroll Board of Supervisors meeting as the supervisors funded 98 percent of the education request.

The Galax Middle School Choir recently entertained the city's school board with a selection of songs. At the board's February meeting, the choir lined up behind a row of shelves in the GHS library, where they performed two songs: "Hot Chocolate" and "Amani Utupe Na Ustawi," which means "Grant us peace, give us courage" in Swahili. Four members of the choir have made it into the all-district choir, while nine submissions had been accepted for the state middle school choir.

HILLSVILLE — The increased revenue that county schools will request from the Carroll supervisors won’t even cover the new expenses coming from state and federal government mandates, the school board discussed at its March 14 meeting.
And educators still don’t know what the impacts on federal programs that sequestration will have on Carroll schools.
The changes to federal and state revenues that Superintendent Strader Blankenship discussed in his first budget presentation aren’t huge at this point.