SchoolMatters Weblog

Where is Albemarle Growing as of 1st Quarter 2008?

Albemarle County has released the 2008 First Quarter Building Report. Thus I have updated my previous analysis of where new building permits are being issued in the County.  These do NOT reflect all newly approved developments, but rather homes in developments previously approved where a building permit has now been issued.  ALSO, while the County's report includes ALL types of housing, my analysis is limited to single family detached (SFD) homes, as those are a leading indicator of future enrollment growth for Albemarle County Public Schools.

Looking back over the last twelve month period (April 2007-March 2008), SFD building permits were issued as follows in Albemarle's six magisterial districts:

94 (34.2%) in White Hall
62 (22.5%) in Scottsville
55 (20.0%) in Rivanna
37 (13.5%) in Samuel Miller
17 (6.2%) in Rio
10 (3.6%) in Jack Jouett

From my website you can download a historical view of this data by magisterial district (chart above). http://www.wheeleronboard.com/docs/2008Q1-BuildingReport-chart.pdf

For the SFD permits detailed above (last 12 months), the two largest sub-groups geographically were Albemarle's rural areas (65.09% of SFD permits) and the Crozet designated growth area (16.36% of SFD permits). HOWEVER, for building permits of all housing types in the County thus far in 2008 (127 permits in first quarter), 49 are in the rural areas, or 38.6%.  While the percentage in the rural area is a higher number this quarter, historically the total number of permits is low for this quarter and that skews the percentages.

Brian Wheeler

Albemarle OKs $334.7 million budget

4/10/08 * Daily Progress [full story]

Silence.

It’s a rarity at an Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting, but with supervisors at a more than three-hour impasse over the county’s fiscal 2009 real-estate tax rate Wednesday, it seemed all points and rebuttals had been made.

The meeting started at 2 p.m. and a rate of 71 cents per $100 assessed value was adopted around 6:30 p.m. — after a break for sandwiches — but the tax agreement wasn’t reached without some compromise and creativity. The rate was ultimately approved 4-2, with Supervisors Lindsay G. Dorrier Jr. and Kenneth C. Boyd opposing.

At 71 cents, the typical owner of a home valued at $300,000 will pay $74 more than at the current tax rate of 68 cents per $100 assessed value, according to a county budget analyst.

County Supervisors adopt 71 cent tax rate; School request satisfied

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors started their budget and tax rate discussion at 2PM today and by about 6:45 PM we had a tax rate.  The Board was split 3-3 for much of the day with half the board favoring a 70 cent tax rate (Boyd, Dorrier, Rooker) and the other half favoring 71 cents (Mallek, Slutzky, Thomas).  In the end, the Board adopted, by a 4-2 vote, a 71 cent real estate property tax rate with the stipulation that one cent of tax revenues (about $1.6 million) be set aside and only used if projected revenues are less than budgeted during the next fiscal year.  Any funds not utilized for revenue shortfalls will be returned to the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) budget at the end of the year.

The County's 2007 tax rate was 68 cents.  Thus a 71 cent tax rate represents a 3 cent increase. In their discussions, Supervisors said the resulting tax increase for the average household in the County would be about $30 a year. [Update 4/10/08: That $30 was the difference between the 70 and 71 cent rates.  Daily Progress reports overall increase is $74 for average household.  By my calculations, it is $93 a year if you hold the median sales price of an Albemarle home constant. See my comment on this post below.  Sorry for the confusion.  BW]

As a result of this action, I expect the Albemarle County School Board's $151.3 million budget request for 2008-09 to be fully funded. Speaking as one Board member and not on behalf of the School Board, I believe this is in no small part thanks to the support of our community at the numerous public hearings and in communications sent to the Board of Supervisors.  THANK YOU!  They got the message loud and clear and every Supervisor expressed their desire to support our schools at today's meeting.  Even those that voted against the final tax rate (Boyd/Dorrier) were willing to support 70 or 70.5 cents which also would have satisfied the school funding request when combined with a one penny transfer from the capital budget, as had been recommended by County Executive Bob Tucker.

In summary, the School Division will receive additional revenues based on the reallocation of one penny in capital funds towards operational expenses, plus the impact of the tax rate being increased (schools will have access to revenues generated from 2 cents of tax rate increase, with the third penny being held in the local government contingency fund).

The School Board will have a budget work session on Thursday, April 17, 2008 to finalize its budget.  The Board has said previously that it will continue with some cuts (e.g. central office expenditures) regardless of the revenues available as part of its implementation of recommendations in the Resource Utilization Study.  Other cuts (e.g. strings & world languages staffing subsidies) or additions (e.g. specialty centers) that were identified in various contingency plans and previously considered by the Board will be on the table for final review.

Brian Wheeler

NSBA 2008 Blogs Panel

Blogging School District Leaders: Directly Engage Your Community Using the Internet
NSBA Annual Conference, March 29, 2008

If you are interested in my two-page handout from the 2008 NSBA blogs panel, you can find it here:
http://www.wheeleronboard.com/docs/NSBA2008presentation.pdf

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Links in that document

Blog authoring software:
TypePad http://www.typepad.com
WordPress http://www.wordpress.com

Web-based RSS readers:
Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com

Primers on RSS feeds:
http://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2006/01/rss-intro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss

Listserv or e-mail mailing list software:
Yahoo! Groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ 

Online calendars:
Trumba http://www.trumba.com
Google Calendar http://calendar.google.com

Albemarle County Public Schools Policy BG: Board-Staff Communications
http://www.wheeleronboard.com/docs/ACPS-BG_0306.pdf

Brian Wheeler

School Board bloggers to meet at national conference

I will be attending the National School Boards Association Annual Conference in Orlando during March 28th to April 1st.  There I'll be reconnecting with Craig Colgan who organized a panel on blogging at NSBA's 2006 conference.  This year joining our blogging presentation will be a School Board member who was in the audience in 2006, Jennifer Abell (Charles County, MD).  I am really looking forward to hear about Jennifer's experiences since we encouraged her to take the plunge into the blogosphere.

Four other Albemarle County School Board members will be in attendance at NSBA.  This is the single best opportunity we have for professional development as a board.  I'll also be "blogging the conference" volunteering for NSBA to summarize the workshops I attend on their conference website.

Brian Wheeler

Where do County employees live?

At a recent joint meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and School Board, members asked staff to prepare a map showing the home localities of County employees.  We received the map yesterday and I was surprised to see that 66.51% of our employees live in Charlottesville or Albemarle.  I expected more employees to live outside the immediate area. 

That said, the map notes 345 employees did not provide a response, and I wonder if the School Division's data would look differently if mapped by itself.

Brian Wheeler

Update on long range plans & redistricting

The Albemarle County School Board just received an update on long range planning and redistricting issues.  The Crozet and Brownsville Elementary communities should expect a thorough update from the School Division in May 2008 related to Phase II of the redistricting plans to open the addition being built at Brownsville.

Boundary Adjustments - The first phase of adjustments will examine different options for moving students from Crozet Elementary to Brownsville Elementary for the fall of 2009. Staff is currently reviewing 5-year projections, numbers of students at each grade level, current location of students, and predicted growth to develop viable options to be presented to the community in May. After the community presentation. a web-site will be developed to receive input through the summer. Staff will then consider the input, look at September 30th enrollment numbers, and finalize options to be brought forward to the Superintendent and ultimately to the School Board.

Over the next year, staff will toke a comprehensive look at capacity, projected enrollment numbers, and anticipated growth to address capacity issues for the entire Division. Topics of discussion will include the current structure of K-5, 6-8, and 9-12, assumptions regarding feeder patterns, and routing of buses.

Download entire memo as a PDF.

Brian Wheeler

Access to the Access Albemarle project

The Daily Progress printed a story today about an information technology project known as Access Albemarle.  Since I expect a lot of constituent questions about this use of taxpayer dollars, I want to share what little information I have on this matter.

Access Albemarle is a project to replace local government's mainframe computing and financial management systems.  The school division was very excited about the commencement of this project several years ago as it promised to give us significantly improved financial management capabilities.

Speaking as one School Board member and not on behalf of the board, I can tell you information has been very hard to come by on this project.  I have been told I cannot learn about the status of the project unless I come to a closed meeting on the subject.  I am told this is because of the legal issues around the contract negotiations with Microsoft. 

Frankly, I think this is a disservice to the public who would benefit from knowing the goals, investments made, and exact status of this project.  I trust the Board of Supervisors has more information at their disposal from their closed meetings, and I hope that such information can be more broadly shared now with schools and the public.  School Board member Steve Koleszar is quoted in the article because he volunteered a couple of months ago to represent the School Division at a private briefing on the project.

While local government staff and Board of Supervisors Chairman Ken Boyd express optimism in the article that Access Albemarle is getting back on track (the project is not managed by the school division), our schools have not been able to take advantage of many of the new features and capabilities we were expecting to have in our budgetary and financial systems, tools that will help us be more efficient and effective as an organization.  Delays, at a minimum, certainly represent missed opportunity.

Brian Wheeler

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3/20/08 * Daily Progress [full story]

$4 million buys 2 years of delay for Albemarle

Albemarle County officials have spent $4 million on software officials say will improve customer service, as well as streamline and modernize the county’s computer system.

But $4 million later, there’s still no system in place.

Known as Access Albemarle, the project has paired county officials with Microsoft to update and upgrade the county’s software, and the $4 million spent so far has gone toward the total project, including software, hardware and consultant fees.

The bulk of that cost, $3.5 million, went to Microsoft for consultant fees and software. Other costs include reusable software and hardware and services to improve the county’s business processes, at a price tag of $675,000.

Schools' IB plans come into focus

2/29/08 * Daily Progress [full story]

School administrators from Fluvanna and Hanover counties as well as Charlottesville met with two members of the Albemarle School Board on Thursday evening to discuss the International Baccalaureate program.

Albemarle school officials are investigating the possibility of bringing the IB program to an undetermined number of county schools. The School Board’s proposed $151.3 million budget for fiscal 2009 includes $200,000 for specialty center planning, including the IB proposal as well as plans for math and science academies at Albemarle High School.

“We have a number of practical questions that we will have to answer related to budget, transportation and fairness to all schools within the division, but I was very excited to hear about the program and the success it can bring to students,” said School Board member Jon Stokes, who attended the IB work session with fellow board member Ron Price.

Albemarle is considering IB programs at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Moran suggests possible cuts

2/27/08 * Daily Progress [full story]

Albemarle Superintendent Pam Moran provided the School Board Tuesday with three sets of recommended cuts, as the board works to fine tune its contingency plan to deal with shrinking revenue projections.

The School Board’s proposed budget currently totals $151.3 million - $2.3 million more than overall projected revenues.

The three sets of potential cuts were based on varying revenue levels.

If the School Board has to make up all of the projected shortfall - which would happen if the Board of Supervisors does not give schools an additional 2 cents on county’s tax rate - Moran recommended 18 cost savings measures that would balance the budget.