Mathews Public Schools will need almost $300,000 above the current appropriation from the county just to "break even" in the system’s 2011-2012 budget, according to Superintendent of Schools David J. Holleran.

And that doesn’t account for the possibility of employee raises to offset the loss in wages that workers will experience once they have to chip in 5 percent of their gross salaries into the Virginia Retirement System.

Holleran gave school board members their first peek at next year’s budget during a work session Tuesday afternoon, which was held in the Thomas Hunter Middle School media center.

The school division is actually facing a cut of more than $500,000 in state aid in the coming year, driven primarily by two factors. The first is the loss of the "hold harmless" payment made during the current budget to offset a change in the state’s composite index.

The composite index is the formula used by the state to determine a loc...