Hopes fading for more state school funding for Rappahannock County

• Expected $1.5 million subsidy removed in Richmond budget negotiations

• Costly mandated staff raises possible

The prospect of a $1.5 million shot-in-the-arm for Rappahannock County Public Schools (RCPS) is fading.   

Subcommittees in both the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates last week removed the supplemental aid subsidy to RCPS from their education appropriations packages. This was despite the fact that the additional funding had been included in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed budget, a development that made school district officials hopeful that the bonus payment would be available for their 2024-25 budget.

RCPS Superintendent Shannon Grimsley conceded she was surprised by the legislators’ decision. “There’s a chance the governor will hold firm and put this back in the budget,” she said. “But I was not very happy.”

The next step in Richmond is the appointment of the members of the conference committee who will attempt to thrash out the differences between the Senate and the House of Delegates on the budget.

Grimsley pointed out that the potential loss of the subsidy comes at a time when the legislature is also pursuing mandates — such as teacher salary hikes and the hiring of additional guidance counselors — which could significantly increase school district expenses.  

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “These are good things. But they come with costs.”

The result is that the school district is facing a “fiscal paradox,” Grimsley wrote in a commentary last week in the Rappahannock News. “To put this in perspective,” she added, “a 10% raise for RCPS staff over the two years of the biennium will cost RCPS approximately $1 million, of which the state will only provide 17% of that cost as projected by the current funding formula.”

In an effort to restore the supplemental aid to RCPS, Del. Michael Webert (R-Fauquier) read part of Grimsley’s article to House delegates during a budget session last week. But his pitch was followed by comments by Del. Sam Rasoul (D-Roanoke City) who told Webert that while he “appreciates and understands the challenges your school division is going through,” he felt the matter should be addressed by Rappahannock County.

“Rappahannock has the sixth largest tax base per capita in the state,” Rasoul noted, “So what we’d be doing is providing a one-off for a county that is rather well off. But what they refuse to do is increase their tax rate…which is one of the lowest in the state.”

Then, by a 57-42 margin, the delegates sided with Rasoul and defeated the effort to put the money for RCPS back in the budget.

A flawed formula?

The “one-off” to which Rasoul referred has a history dating back to 2008. That’s when a cap was placed by the legislature on supplemental basic aid payments for which only four low-population counties in the state, including Rappahannock, qualified. For some undetermined reason, the cap was never lifted for Rappahannock, and Grimsley, along with a group of county officials and residents, have spent the past two years trying to rectify the situation.

Complicating financial matters for the school district is the Local Composite Index (LCI), the complex formula used by Virginia to determine how much funding each county receives from the state to pay for public education. Almost all of the weight of the formula’s ranking is determined by the true value of real property and the adjusted gross income of residents in a county. The result is that Rappahannock County has to cover roughly 80% of the school district’s budget, comparable to the ranking of wealthy and highly commercialized counties such as Fairfax and Arlington. 

Rappahannock’s LCI ranking doesn’t reflect how much county land is taxed at a lower tax rate–only an estimated 15% is taxed at fair market value–or that according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, the difference between what the top 1% of county residents earn and what the bottom 99% earn is among the highest in the country. 

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Ironically, the effort to get the supplemental funding last year was deep-sixed by a state Senate committee that wanted to first review the final report from a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC)  analyzing the formula for funding public education. It concluded that the state’s approach lacks “clear rationale” and results in Virginia funding public school students at $1,900 below the national average.

School board member Chris Ubben (Wakefield) found the latest setback in receiving the supplemental aid particularly frustrating since it affects only Rappahannock County, and comes at a time when costs, such as the school district health insurance payments, are rising. He also cited the ripple effects of cutting costs to compensate for the lack of state support.  

“We already have people doing more than one job,” he said, adding that unless RCPS can pay salaries that are at least somewhat competitive with larger school districts, it runs the risk of becoming a “training ground” for teachers who leave after they get a few years of experience.

In response to Del. Rasoul’s suggestion that the county should be willing to raise property taxes  to cover rising costs, Ubben said, “Give us our fair share of taxes that we’ve paid to Richmond and haven’t gotten back because of the LCI. Where’s that money?”

Tough love

The potential loss of the anticipated $1.5 million will likely intensify negotiations between the school district and county officials as they finalize their budgets in the coming weeks. Hampton Supervisor Keir Whitson said that could involve engaging in “some tough love” with his counterparts on the School Board and with Grimsley.

Whitson said he wasn’t that surprised by the turn of events in Richmond. “Clearly, we have not been able to count on things going our way from a state funding perspective for some time.

“I’m not going to engage in hand-wringing,” he added. “Now it’s a matter of how do we find middle ground between the county and the school system where we’re not putting undue pressure on local taxpayers. I represent many, many families who live on fixed incomes or on very modest means.”  

Last year, the supervisors managed to avoid raising the property tax rate, despite the fact that the county’s contribution to the school district increased by $550,000. Whitson said he’d like to see that financial support drop back to what it had been the previous year, roughly $8.9 million.

“We want a strong school system, and we have to fund it,” he said. “But I don’t want to get into a pattern where year after year our local contribution continues to increase while our local tax base remains steady. 

“We need to get to the fundamental question of where do we need to end up so Superintendent Grimsley can still run the school district in a quality way. But I don’t want to be in a knee-jerk position where we just put the burden on our taxpayers every year.”

RCPS enrollment going up

Rappahannock County Public Schools (RCPS) may be facing financial challenges this spring, but one bright spot is its current enrollment. Now, 46 more students are enrolled at RCPS than at this time in 2023, according to data provided by Superintendent Shannon Grimsley. 

The total of 791 students is the highest since the 2020-21 school year, and a 6% bump from last year. The increase is almost evenly split between the high school and elementary school, with 24 more students at the former and 22 more at the latter.

The largest elementary school increase is in the kindergarten class, which has added 11 more students than it had as last year’s pre-K class. At the high school, the same number was added to the class now in ninth grade.

The enrollment upturn slows, at least for now, the disconcerting trend of rising costs and fewer students at RCPS. The additional students this year will increase to some extent what the school district receives from the state. 

Here’s more enrollment breakdown:

• RCPS now has 57 students who live outside the county. Most are children of school district or county employees.

• 12 students formerly home-schooled are now enrolled at RCPS. Grimsley said that 88 children in the county are  being homeschooled. 

• 17 former private school students are now enrolled in the public elementary school and 12 are in the high school.  Based on census data, Grimsley estimated that 95 Rappahannock children and adolescents attend private schools.

• Countering the enrollment increase is the withdrawal of 62 students at RCPS through the end of February, usually the result of families moving out of the county. That’s the lowest the withdrawal figure has been in the past six years. It hit 100 two years ago. 

— Randy Rieland for Foothills Forum

Foothills Forum is an independent, community-supported nonprofit tackling the need for in-depth research and reporting on Rappahannock County issues.

The group has an agreement with Rappahannock Media, owner of the Rappahannock News, to present this series and other award-winning reporting projects. More at foothillsforum.org.