State Education Funding

The Community Voices blog has only been up for a few days and we have already had a lot of great ideas and suggestions. Thank you for taking part.

Periodically, I will try to post information that is helpful to the discussion. With that in mind, I wish to provide info about the House and Senate budgets, and their impact on Charlottesville and Albemarle Schools. The tables below were put together based on a report from the State Board of Education on HB 29 and SB 29, which amend the budget for FY2010, and HB 30 and SB 20, which are the proposed budgets for FY2011 and FY2012.

The budget bills can be found at the Legislative Information System on the General Assembly website, or at this link: http://leg1.state.va.us/. Links to the House and Senate budget summaries, which explain more specifically where cuts are being made and which policies are being changed, can be found in the "relevant links" box in the right sidebar.

As you can see below, while both bills present deep cuts to K-12 education, the House version has a much greater effect (both with or without Delegate Bell's budget amendment) on our local schools. In the House version--which presently includes the Bell amendment--Charlottesville's state allocation is decreased by 35.5% from 2009 to 2012 levels; Albemarle loses 14.7%. In the Senate version, Charlottesville loses 10.3% and Albemarle loses 8.1%.

As a hypothetical, I have also shown the House budget without the Bell amendment. In this scenario, Charlottesville loses 21.5% and Albemarle loses 20.7%.

HOUSE
.................................(HB 29) .............(HB 30)..............(HB 30)
.........FY 2009.............FY 2010..............FY 2011.............FY 2012
Alb:.. $47,369,639.......$46,725,911*......$44,331,663......$40,389,125
Cville:$20,162,267......$18,313,300*.....$13,992,214.......$12,995,468

*Includes projected federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund monies

HOUSE (without Bell adjustment)
................................(HB 29)................(HB 30).............(HB 30)
.........FY 2009.............FY 2010..............FY 2011...........FY 2012
Alb: ....$47,369,639.....$46,725,911*.....$41,505,983.....$37,563,445
Cville: $20,162,267.....$18,313,300*.....$16,817,894.....$15,821,148

*Includes projected federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund monies

SENATE
................................(SB 29) ...............(SB 30) ..............(SB 30)
...........FY 2009 ..........FY 2010 .............FY2011 .............FY 2012
Alb: ....$47,369,639 ....$46,711,974* .....$43,334,285 .....$43,551,171
Cville: $20,162,267 ....$18,307,299* .....$18,153,832 .....$18,088,680

*Includes projected federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund monies

I hope these figures will enlighten the discussion. In my view, the Senate budget is better for education in our localities.

-David J. Toscano