School Board revises compensation targets in budget

Last night, the Albemarle County School Board voted 6-1 to align its compensation targets in the FY2009-10 budget with the revised recommendations made by our Human Resources staff on January 14, 2008.  Those recommendations are as follows:

• 2% increase in classified scale.  (decreased by 1%)
• 3.35% merit increase for classified staff.  (decreased by 1%)
• Design teacher scale to meet market and distribute 4.0% along teacher scale. (no change from October recommendations)

The School Board reached this decision after receiving information that Governor Kaine's revised budget estimates indicate the County may receive around $250,000 less than previously anticipated in state revenues.

This adjustment in compensation plans is projected to save about $330,000 in the Superintendent's original $153 million funding request now under review by the School Board.  The public hearing on the School Board's budget is January 29, 2008.

Brian Wheeler

Comments

[Jim Duncan]

Brian -

What percentage of the Albemarle County budget is devoted to the School system?

How much of that comes from property taxes?

I found this in the budget, but without the greater context wasn't sure -

Revenue Assumptions: • $7,267,173 (7.97%) in additional local revenues based upon a $0.68 property tax rate, an increased rate of personal property taxes, and other increases in fees assessed by the Board of Supervisors.

[bawheeler]

Jim – The figure you cite is from the 2007-08 adopted budget (i.e. the current school year). For your information, in our proposed budget for FY2009, based on revised data from yesterday, that number is now projected to be $73,311 (0.074%) of TOTAL additional revenues from local government to the schools for next year. Yes, I have those commas and decimals in the right places.

Now with respect to your question, and going back to the current year’s adopted budget…

Q. What percentage of the Albemarle County budget is devoted to the School system? How much of that comes from property taxes?

Local government budget information is here.

A. This year the schools received a transfer from local government of $98,433,401 for operations (i.e. not debt service, capital, or self-sustaining). That amount is 44.9% of the total County general fund expenditures (see page 58 in local government budget), of which 62% is funded by real estate property taxes (see page 64-65). Keep in mind that is the perspective of the general fund for Albemarle and that there are other sources of local revenue.

If you look at the TOTAL COUNTY budget of $305.8 million for FY2008, the percentages shift a bit. There school operations are 47%, self-sustaining is 5%, capital and debt is 9%. Property taxes are 45% of the revenues from that perspective (see page 57).

So, depending on how you look at it, the school system is 45%, 47%, or 61% (adding debt, capital, self-sustaining) of the County budget and property taxes contribute either 62% or 45%.

I typically refer to the school operational budget to keep things simple, thus 45% of the County budget is for schools and 62% of that comes from local property taxes.

Brian Wheeler

[Dante S.]

So if the county raises $10 million in new property taxes will the school board get 4.5 million or 6.1 million?

[Brian Wheeler]

Dante - The Board of Supervisors allocates 60% of new revenues to the school division and 40% to local government. This is known as the "60/40 split". The actual percentage split between schools and local government varies in any given budget year because of some of the budget issues I mentioned in my other responses above. Brian Wheeler