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estate taxes (for funding school expenses).”
Lois Manookian also shared this viewpoint. She said that “the answer is not to lessen the quality of education, but to find another way of financing.”
Budget increase
of $1M
The budget submitted by the School Board totals $9,450,058.53 and is more than $1 million or 12.53 percent greater than last year’s budget. Because of projected reductions in receipt of funds from Federal and state governments, the County’s contribution would rise more than that $1M to nearly $6.24M, and would in turn require an increase of some 13 cents in the property tax rate, bringing that to about $1.00 per hundred dollars of assessed valuation.
School Board Chairman Wesley Mills explained that the level of proposed funding is attributable to the need to continue the process of increasing expectations and improving Rappahannock County education to better prepare students for college and employment. He said that this year’s budget reflects the need to meet unfunded state mandates and that the technological world in which we live requires that the school purchase appropriate educational materials, such as computers, and that such purchases are no longer restricted to books.
He also noted that the capital expenses are great this year, having risen to more than $500,000 from just over $80,000 last year.
School Board member Franklin Warner also spoke of the capital expense, and asked that the Board of Supervisors remove some of that expense from the schools budget and treat it as an emergency expenditure. To explain the increasing cost of education, Mr. Warner read from an article written by a South Dakota educator that cited a host of additional mandates to which schools must now be responsive.
School Board member Rose Ann Sharp spoke of the potential fiscal benefit of improving Rappahannock Schools. She said that by assuring excellence Rappahannock schools will “draw people from private schools to stop here and pay for excellent education.”
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