Fairfax County Public Schools wants the Board of Supervisors to approve an 8.4 percent increase in funding for next year’s school budget. However, only a small fraction of the additional $135.8 million requested will be directly spent on students — such as a $1.7 million “sweetener” to eliminate athletic fees.
More than 88 percent of the $2.4 billion fiscal 2013 budget will be spent to compensate FCPS employees. A budget analysis prepared for the Fairfax County Federation of Citizens Associations indicates that the proposed budget would create an even larger gap between educators’ pay and benefits and county taxpayers’ ability to foot the bill.
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The analysis shows that between 2000 and 2011, the FCPS budget increased 4.77 percent annually, “far more than the 0.89 percent increase in enrollment and the 2.39 percent increase in cost of living.” During that same time period, median household income in Fairfax County increased just 2.21 percent. As a result, “taxpayers in 2011 were more burdened in paying school system expenses than they were in 2000.”
Already unmoored from economic reality, the latest school budget proposal would only increase the widening gap between what FCPS employees are paid and what county taxpayers can afford. Home values decreased 28 percent on average during the two years following the collapse of the housing bubble, but property taxes did not.
Nor did school expenditures. School Board Chairwoman Jane Strauss claimed in January that FCPS had “eliminated more than 1,400 positions” while property values were nose-diving, but her claim is misleading. Between 2009 and 2011, only 141 employees out of 23,530 were actually laid off because of budget constraints, and 125 of those were clerical or custodial employees. As a result, both renters and homeowners in Fairfax County “experienced a decrease in the family funds available to pay for other needs.”
There’s still another problem with raising compensation levels faster than taxpayers can keep up. The FCFCA’s budget analysis warns that the number of county retirees will triple in the not-too-distant future, and “tax revenues must increase greatly to cover this impending increase.” Employee benefits, which increased 6.79 annually during the last decade, are projected to rise an even more unsustainable 16.36 percent next year. This at a time when Fairfax County’s pension system is already underfunded.
If the Board of Supervisors approves current pay and benefits beyond what economic conditions warrant, it will be setting up even bigger problems for beleaguered county taxpayers in the future.
