HARRISONBURG, VA (Rocktown Now) – The Harrisonburg City School Board discussed the 2025-26 budget at last night’s work session at Rocktown High School.

The overwhelming majority of the budget is spent on personnel and superintendent Dr. Michael Richards proposes a three percent for teachers even though the state budget is also proposing a three percent raise for teachers.

“They say 3% for teachers,” said Dr. Richards. “Well yeah. that’s true, but it’s really 3% for our SOQ funded positions, which includes a lot of teachers. But it does not include all the teachers. And so, we certainly don’t want to give a 3% raise to half of our teachers and not the other half.”

The board hopes to finalize the budget sometime next month in time for Harrisonburg City Council’s deadline, which is the end of May.