Anderson will push school funding grants

Millions of dollars of funds for Prince William County Public Schools remain up in the air.

The County’s Board of Supervisors passed its fiscal 2017 $1 billion budget — more than half of which goes to the county school division to provide majority funding for the education of 87,000 students in its 95 schools. The Board of Supervisors budget left the School Board about $7 million short of revenues it had anticipated getting if Supervisors had set and adopted a tax rate, which would have generated a higher average tax bill for county property owners.

Occoquan Supervisor Ruth Anderson pushed a plan to provide nearly $30 million in grant funding from the County to the School Board to make up for the lower tax rate, and funds lost after her proposal to reduce the automatic fund transfer from to the School Board from 57.23 percent of the entire county budget down to 54 percent.

The School Board must use the funds to reduce the average number of students per class by hiring new teachers, offer teachers better retention bonuses and money for retaining teachers, and to provide classroom materials to reduce the number of teachers purchasing supplies with their cash, said Anderson.

The School Board told the Board of Supervisors it could keep its money by way of a letter from their attorney. It was an about face from one year ago when the School Board accepted $1 million in grant funding from Supervisors that had to have been used to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes, according to the funding requirement.

“I’m tearing out my hair trying to think, since we don’t have control over the school budget in any form, how do we get them the money and to make sure the money is spent wisely,” said Anderson.

The letter from the School Board correctly points out that in Virginia the Board of Supervisors is the taxing authority, and that the School Board cannot levy taxes to fund the school division. It can and does accept funding from the Supervisors, and from state and federal sources, but can spend it how it sees fit.

Anderson’s made her proposal in the 11th hour of the budget process, during a period called budget markup when Supervisors take a series of straw polls to decide what to leave in the budget and what to take out. Anderson said she’ll go back to her Board on June 21 to push for the $1 million challenge grant funding to lower classroom sizes, and to lower the automatic transfer rate to the schools. The School Board must match the $1 million grant as it did last year, according to Anderson.

Anderson said discussions are still ongoing as to where to put a new elementary school in her Occoquan District. Schools have previously been built on county-owned land proffered to it by land developers. No such site exists today in the district to place the needed school.

“The Occoquan District has least amount of green space than any other magisterial district in the county,” said Anderson.

Proponents of a new school want to build it on wooded acreage next to the Chinn Library and Aquatics and Fitness Center complex. Anderson doesn’t support the idea and said mixing school buses with already busy traffic at the intersection of Old Bridge Road and Prince William Parkway is a bad idea.

Their other potential sites the county is considering to give to the school division to build its school. Andeson could not talk about them because negotiations are still underway, she said.

The need for a new school in the Occoquan District was reduced from two elementary schools to one because of renovations that will occur at three elementary schools on Old Bridge Road. A total of 13 new classrooms will be added at those schools.