2009.03.11
Radford budget plan tight
RADFORD — Radford City’s school board would eliminate three part-time positions, cut back hours for others and eliminate summer school under a $13.5 million draft operating budget finally reviewed Tuesday.
The school division expects to lose $650,000 in funding in the coming year, according to Superintendent Chuck Bishop.
And that includes federal stimulus money, which he said isn’t the remedy that was expected.
“The reality is, it will save a few jobs, it’s not going to save ‘em all.” Bishop said.
Most of that money is for the current year, not the coming years, he said, and no one knows how divisions can use the money that will be available in the next biennium, he said.
Vice-chairman G. Lynn Burriss told Bishop he might have to look at requiring employees to pay $40 each month for single health insurance. Right now, the district picks up 100 percent of the basic “Key Advantage 500” plan.
The proposed budget also leaves two special education spots vacant, reduces the hours of library aides and five bus drivers, cuts part-time music and physical education instructors, cuts Stanford 9/10 student exams.
The budget has “no wiggle room,” Bishop said. He told board members if a teachers became ill and the district had to pay both medical leave and a long-term substitute, it will mean a deficit.
The board’s next meeting is 6 p.m. March 24.
Dindinger’s pitch brings home JMU spot
Scholarships are bestowed upon a select few graduates, and senior Heather Dindinger already knows she is one of those few.
Dindinger will receive an athletic scholarship from James Madison University (JMU) for her performance as a softball pitcher.
Starting with T-ball at the age of five, she moved up to softball at the age of ten and has played ever since.
Dindinger sees the scholarship as a privilege. “It makes me want to work that much harder this season to be ready for college,” she said.
JMU is a Division I (D-I) Colonial Conference school, “The best of the best” in their division, added Dindinger.
“I always wanted to go to a D-I college,” she said.
JMU was Dindinger’s first choice when she was selecting a college. She had been talking to JMU for the past year, so being selected for a scholarship was not too much of a surprise.
Dindinger is the first student from Auburn to get a scholarship from a D-I school since 1986.
“She’s a good athlete with tremendous skill,” said teacher and softball coach David Hurd.
Even though Dindinger has a lot of natural talent, not everything comes easily. Recently she had a cyst attached to the ligament in her finger.
“It had to be surgically removed because it was affecting my ability to pitch,” she said.
It was a delicate operation. If the doctors had hit the ligament she would have lost feeling in her middle finger. Since that is the finger that gets Dindinger most of her pitching spin, she was “really worried going into surgery.”As she approaches her senior softball season, Dindinger has the advantage of knowing where she’ll be using her pitching skills next year.
I wrote this for Auburn High schools Winged Messenger.
Comment by Cody Ambrose — March 12, 2009 @ 12:37 pm