Charlottesville schools face millions in budget cuts

The governor’s proposed budget would cost the Charlottesville schools $4 million, while an Albemarle County push to move some state funding from city to county schools could remove up to $2.5 million, Charlottesville School Board members heard Thursday.

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s budget contains both budget cuts and increased expenses for the state retirement system, said city schools director of finance Ed Gillaspie.

“Any way you wrap it, it’s bad news,” said newly minted School Board chairman Ned Michie. He also called the budget news “ugly stuff.”

State funding models take college students 19 and younger into account, but those students will now be tallied in the areas where their parents live, rather than where they reside, Gillaspie said. That change is expected to move roughly $1.2 million from the city to other areas around the state.

School officials had anticipated about $600,000 of the funding cuts, which will come from stimulus funds that were expected to dry up.

About half of the cost will come from increased contributions to the state’s chronically underfunded retirement system, officials said.

Gillaspie said the budget is already pared down.

“We’ve done a lot of nibbling around the edges. … We’ve shuffled and shaved and diced and been as creative as we can so far,” he said.

Michie also criticized efforts by Albemarle County officials to get the General Assembly to pass a bill proposed by Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, that would alter the state funding formula for school divisions to account for the revenue sharing agreement between the city and county. When the agreement was drafted, the county agreed to pay the city millions of dollars annually in exchange for the city forgoing attempts to annex miles of county land.

The board unanimously passed a resolution opposing the measure.

Supporters of the proposal have said it would mean that state funding models would accurately reflect the county’s ability to pay.

Michie argued against the idea that officials overlooked the impact on state schools funding when they hammered out the agreement decades ago.

County officials understood and accepted the impact the agreement would have on their state funding, he said, pointing to one counter proposal county officials made during negotiations, offering to cede to the city governance of the land on which the University of Virginia is located. The move, Michie said county officials argued at the time, would give Charlottesville an influx of poor-on-paper residents and boost their school funding.

The chairman called it a back-door means of changing the revenue-sharing agreement. And the county proposal could seriously hurt city schools, he said.

“If they were to succeed and take this money from us and give it to them, it would really give us a pretty devastating blow to our budget,” he said.

Michie has previously served as chairman. No one else was nominated for the job, and there was no discussion before the board voted 7 to 0 to appoint him.