Franklin County schools still face painful cuts despite a little more money from supervisors.

Public pressure prompted Franklin County supervisors on Tuesday to kick in $300,000 more in support of public schools. The small gesture came with big strings: Supervisors would like the school board to restore middle school sports and send bright freshmen to the governor’s school, and they’d like for people to stop blaming them.

Supervisors are not callous villains. No. But they aren’t heroes of public school education, either. Nor when they squander children’s potential are they very good stewards of the county’s resources.

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By Esther J. Cepeda

It’s that time. If you’re a teacher in a school with a large concentration of Hispanic students, you’re doing end-of-year reviews and preparing for final exams — and you have kids trickling up to you to let you know they won’t be around for them.

This also happens at the beginning of the school year and during the holidays as parents take their children out of classes for long family trips. But I can tell you from firsthand experience that there’s nothing worse than getting through the post-spring break blahs and pushing hard to end the year strong, only to have students drop like flies before you reach the finish line.

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Cepeda is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

Leaders could have used a quilt to inspire a conversation on race relations.

Martinsville City Council has decided to carry on as if the whole patchwork quilt controversy never flared.

Too bad. A group of fine students will lose an opportunity to broaden their minds by seeing their world through different eyes. And, at best, the city now will slip into polite silence between black and white on matters of race.

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Franklin County’s leaders are doing real damage to public education. They can, though, keep it from being lasting.

Tonight, barring a change of heart by miserly supervisors, the Franklin County School Board will cut $1.5 million from an already austere budget. To reach that sum, the board may need to reduce its program for gifted students, eliminate resource teachers for struggling students, pull out of the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School, eliminate middle school athletics and charge students to play sports or march with the band. And the list goes on.

The days of 15 to 20 pupils to a class already were history in Franklin County, as most teachers now have 30 to a class, thanks to years of belt-tightening. Franklin County’s schools, once the pride of the community, are already on the slippery trajectory that, if not corrected, will continue past the point of mediocrity and plummet into the troubled abyss.

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Franklin County’s failure to adequately fund its public schools could jeopardize the education of every student enrolled at the governor’s school.

When Franklin County supervisors refused to adequately fund their public schools, they set in motion a series of unfortunate decisions that now risk not only their own children’s education but that of the Roanoke Valley’s best and brightest students. Eventually, the supervisors’ poor decision could stymie economic growth that is so dependent on a workforce skilled in the sciences and technology.

Unless $1.5 million magically appears by Monday, the Franklin County School Board will be required to reduce its already lean budget by that amount. Though there is a list of options, one as appalling as the next, it is anticipated the board will opt to save $140,000 by pulling out of the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School. A drop in the $1.5 million budget deficit, yes, but the ripples it creates could spell the end for the governor’s school.

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by Michael Sluss

Wendell Jones had something to get off his chest Tuesday night before the Montgomery County School Board voted on a $94.6 million school division budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The board chairman called the public’s attention to county-generated funds that will be spent as a result of policy decisions made in Richmond and Washington, not Christiansburg.

Jones didn’t disagree with the most expensive of those policy decisions — a 2 percent pay raise for teachers and instructional staff approved by the General Assembly and Gov. Bob McDonnell. The state allocated a little more than $586,000 to pay for its share of the salary increase, the first state-supported pay raise for teachers since 2007. But the county had to kick in more than $1 million of its own to fully fund the raise and to provide the same benefit to other school division employees.

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Sluss is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

By Eddie Amos

Having worked in the high-tech industry for the past 30 years, I have witnessed the importance of a sound education based on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Collectively, these disciplines are known as STEM and the acronym has become the rallying point to drive awareness around the projected shortage of workers that we are starting to see in this country. In some circles, the letters D or H (STEM-D or STEM-H) are added to the mix to single out the need for more design and health care professionals.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, STEM-related jobs have grown three times faster than jobs outside of this grouping.

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Amos is chief technology officer at Meridium Inc. He is a champion of promoting technology in the Roanoke and Blacksburg area and the importance of STEM education.

By Wendy Kellam

I’m sure you’ve heard the hot topic in Martinsville. I am referring to the quilt that was presented to the city council by students from the Piedmont Governor’s School. I have listened to many opinions about the quilt. Again, I have listened because most of our learning comes from listening.

A white co-worker and I had a great discussion. She and I gave opinions, which differed, but we were able to listen and understand each other’s point of view. When my co-worker said, “I’m not black so I never thought of it from that perspective,” I thought her words were a refreshing honesty that more people (of all races) need to dig into. However, as a black woman, I understand how Councilwoman Sharon Brooks Hodge felt when the quilt was presented and the reference was made about the black man on the quilt.

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Kellam, of Bassett, works for Technique Solutions, is president of the Virginia sister chapter of Pretty Girls Rock, which mentors girls ages 6 to 18, and is publishing a book, “America’s Most Wanted, Young Black Males.”

By Adam Peters

I am a parent of two wonderful children, a sixth-grade boy at Ben Franklin Middle School and a fourth-grade girl at Windy Gap. Both are in the Gateway; my son just completed his evaluation for Advanced Placement courses with high marks, and my daughter should be taking the Test of Mathematical Abilities for Gifted Students next year, assuming the program still exists. Both are doing quite well. We also know a lot of other kids who are excelling in these challenging times and doing remarkably well.

If I understand the recently shot down 2-cent tax proposal, according to city-data.com, the average home value in Franklin County was $154,000; therefore, the annual tax increase would be $31 on average.

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Peters, his wife and children live in Hardy. He works in Christiansburg.

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By Clarence C. Rose and Steven BeachThe Roanoke Time’s editorial “Classify economics as a foreign language” in the April 29 edition was filled with some important facts but also jumped to some very questionable conclusions concerning the benefits of efforts to introduce financial education into high schools.

In a nutshell, it concluded that since scores on the economics part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress have fallen since the financial crisis, even for high school seniors in states requiring a class in finance, that educational efforts in economics and personal finance are a waste of resources at the high school level.

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Rose is a professor of finance and director of the Center for Financial Education at Radford University. Beach is associate professor of finance and associate director of the Governmental and Nonprofit Assistance Center at Radford University.