Virginia public schools students would have fewer new textbooks to study from, and fewer support staff to goad them along, under the bare bones state budget introduced Friday by Gov. Tim Kaine.
Textbook funding for local jurisdictions from the state — ranging in 2009 from $300,000 in Alexandria to nearly $5 million in Fairfax — will be eliminated from the current year’s budget in an effort to help fill the state’s $3.6 billion shortfall through 2012.
State school funding accounts for a large portion of district budgets, though generally not more than local funding amounts.
“This is a tough decision to make, but the need to keep this budget in balance requires that we do so,” Kaine said of the unpopular cuts, in a Friday speech.
Kitty Boitnott, president of the 60,000-member Virginia Education Association, was shocked by the cuts to school staff. Reducing state support for non-teaching personnel would mean job losses, she said.
Specific effects on D.C.-area districts were not immediately clear.
“We just don’t know yet — we hope to know more by Monday,” said Fairfax School Board member Jane Strauss.
One piece that did appear to be clear, she said, is that the county will not see an increase of about $50 million in funding that in normal years would come to them as a result of a state formula based in part on increased enrollment. Fairfax, along with each of the Northern Virginia districts, has seen increased enrollment this year. Essentially, the districts will educate more students with fewer funds.
Strauss said that Fairfax’s budget planners had anticipated that those funds would not come through, and so had not counted on them in the planning process.
By every calculation, the schools face a tough upcoming school year, with far fewer resources than during the current term.
Projections put the next year’s shortfall between $11 million and $17 million in Alexandria. That’s as much as 9 percent of the school district’s current $198 million budget.
In Arlington County schools, the combined shortfall for this year and next is more than $44 million, or about 6 percent of the current budget. And in Fairfax, the state’s largest school system, next year’s gap is about $170 million, or 8 percent of this year’s already lean budget.
