For several decades, Virginia has used a formula called the local composite index (LCI) to ensure that very poor localities had the funds to operate their school systems and that all children in Virginia had a shot at an equal education. Basically the formula directs revenues from wealthier areas into poorer districts. Because situations change, the LCI is calculated yearly.
From Del. Dave Albo’s website:
School funding in the Commonwealth of Virginia is determined by the Local Composite Index, or LCI. The LCI is a result of a Supreme Court of Virginia ruling which stated that the Virginia Constitution requires all children to receive, to the extent practicable, and equivalent education. Thus, the Court ruled that some funding formula must be used to direct money to areas that can’t afford to educate children. (The Court did not say what the formula has to be only that some redistribution must occur). Consequently, the purpose of the LCI is to ensure less affluent localities are able to provide for their students. The LCI is a figure that determines how much a school system must pay for its own basic education. (“Basic Education” is a set of minimum standards. For example, math must be taught, but band does not.) The LCI, has a cap of .8000 (a locality must pay 80% of its own basic education) but has no minimum. Only 27 out of 136 schools are required to pay more than 50% of their basic education (e.g. have above a .5000 LCI).
The LCI is calculated through a complicated formula. The formula attempts to determine which school systems can afford to may more of their own basic education, and which systems cannot afford to pay. In determining who can pay, a formula has been developed which considers a bunch of different variables.
So what’s the problem? The LCI is changed yearly because conditions change. Governor Kaine placed a freeze until 2012 on recalculating LCI. Governor McDonnell is considering upholding this freeze. Northern Virginians are having a fit because it was hit harder than the rest of the state by foreclosures and a deflated housing market. They will lose millions on the old plan:
According to the Dixie Pig blog (Delegate Scott Surovell’s blog) the Northern Virginia School losses from not adjusting the formula this year are as in the millions. According to Delegate Surovell:
McDonnell’s office confirmed Friday that he would uphold the freeze implemented by Kaine. The outgoing governor proposed freezing the index until the 2012 fiscal year. He theorized that this would protect 97 school divisions that would lose money if the formula were re-calculated. McDonnell Freezes School Funding Formula, The Virginia Gazette (Jan. 25, 2010).
Yesterday, Governor McDonnell who campaigned on the idea that he was from Mt. Vernon and understood Northern Virginia’s needs confirmed that he is going to affirm this policy decision, not just for one year but at least until 2012.
This decision is a breach of the state’s responsibility to Northern Virginia’s children. Here are the top six affected jurisdictions according to the numbers I was given yesterday.
Fairfax County $61 Million Loudoun County $34 Million Prince William County $22 Million Stafford County $4.5 Million Fauquier County $4.3 Million Manassas City $3.1 Million TOTAL $128 Million
Northern Virginians are furious as well they should be. They will have to make up the deficits and jurisdictions are already strapped. It appears that we have been sold out by 2 governors. So much for either Kaine or McDonnell being education governors. And regardless of where he is from, Governor McDonnell obviously does not understand the educational problems of his own county. According to Del. Surovell in an update, the new total is a $144 million dollar shortfall. I hope Prince William and City of Manassas are prepared for 40 kids per class. That number definitely is not considered ‘best practice.’
Northern Virginians should contact their delegate and senator immediately to require the LCI formula to be recalulated as it is supposed to be. This issue is definitely bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans all have kids. So do Independents.
A big thanks to Poor Richard for bringing the Local Composite Index freeze to my attention and for providing background information.
[Ed. Note: The LCI is calculated every TWO years rather than one as stated above.]
You can email your legislators from the Virginia Legislation tab up top, right hand side.
We should definitely (as noted above) thank Poor Richard for bringing up this issue – at least for me, until he wrote about the whole Local Composite Index issue – I had never heard of it or was aware of the extreme consequences of it.
Now, I don’t have any children, but I still believe a strong school system is important in the community, so I still have an interest in this issue, and will indeed write some letters to my state delegate and state senator in the next few days.
Virginia…
“you can’t get much edujumication, but you can pee at our rest areas…”
M-H, Thank you for posting this information. This issue is a BIG DEAL
for those who support the children that attend our public schools.
To my knowledge, though, no local state delegate or senator has
spoken on the issue or even attempted to explain why PWC and
the two cities are being shafted. I had hoped they would defend
the interest of our children in Richmond – apparently I’m wrong.
If recalculating this year screws over the poorer localities, perhaps the formula needs to be rewritten. These politicians are acting like a formula is etched in stone like the 10 commandments. How about tacking on a hardship element in that formula that takes getting slammed by the real estate market into consideration? Seems simple enough to me.
Bobby Mac needs to get get some accountant right on problem and take care of NoVA and especially the kids of NoVA. This kind of kick in the pants, along with our already strapped school system will put student teacher ratio at unacceptable levels.
The formula can be found at Dave Albo’s website. There is a link in the article.
Any formula like this needs to be adjusted when the underlying assumptions that were used to create the formula are changed. That is just common sense. That appears to be what’s happened here, but I haven’t really had the time to get up to speed on all the details, so I may be making uninformed speculation.
The rest area thing, if you ask me is a safety issue, concerning truckers. I have a bad feeling truckers, if they can’t conveniently find a rest area – even when tired may keep on going some miles until they feel like seeking a place off a highway exit to find a place to rest.
I feel the safety issue of not having convenient rest stops for truckers trumps every other thing. All we need is one terribly accident caused by a sleepy trucker who would have otherwise pulled off at a rest stop – but kept going further because he didn’t feel like leaving the highway off an unfamiliar exit and searching out a place to pull over and rest. You may think this is exaggerating, but just think of how many truckers there are, and if the rest stops had remained closed for a longer period of time – it just struck me as an accident waiting to happen.
The safety issue trumps everything else, regarding the rest stop closure, in my opinion. Others may disagree.
That’s not to say that other reasons people expressed about being against the closing of the rest stops, aren’t valid.
And, you could also make the case that chances are even higher of a regular motorist, not finding a rest stop open, and being tired and unfamiliar with things, going further until they finally decide to seek out a place off the highway exit. Not to mention, at night, navigating off an unfamiliar highway exit, might be a bit of a prescription for disaster. Knowing a rest stop is some miles ahead, and it being an easy pull-off, seems to me to add a layer of safety to the interstate highway system. Not knowing where an easy pull-of is, and having to worry about leaving the highway to some exit in the middle of nowhere – seems like inviting disaster. At least with the rest stops, you get signs saying Rest Stop XX miles ahead, and it seems they are well advertised how many miles at various points, in my experiences.
I agree. Having just traveled down to SC via 81, the distance between rest area’s is often well over 100 miles. Taking into account that most of that area is very rural, finding a safeplace to stop can be a great challenge for truckers. I for one vote for the safety issue also.@GainesvilleResident
@GainesvilleResident
GVR- it was just a joke, I think 99% agree we can have rest stops and a reasonably funded education system.
Unfortunatly we are in the hole pretty deep and cuts are going to have to be made in places that will hurt people no matter what. The trick is remembering the pain long enough so you don’t get tricked into living beyond your means or at least electing people who spend your tax dollars beyond your means.
So… call him on it! Republicans aren’t supposed to be into “wealth redistribution”. That’s a Democrat thing. I don’t have a “dog in this fight” (kids in school); however, if I did I would call him on this. It’s something you would expect a Republican to “fix”. Those of you in Lingamfelter’s District should contact him. He is (IMHO) an “arch conservative” who would get this. It’s also (ironically) something our tea-party “friends” should be complaining about. Also, a Republican dominated BOCS should revolt at the very thought of perpetuating this fundamental principal of Democratic social engineering. Note that my position is tailored for this specific incident and does not reflect my general view of the world. It’s good to be an independant!
Opinion, I agree and since I live down the street from Scott L, I will get in touch with him. Although my kids are out of local schools now, I agree with GR that a community needs strong schools.
Wolfie, thanks for the research and posting it as well as thanks to Poor Richard for bringing it up.
You know, I think there are many issues that conservatives, moderates and liberals can agree and that basically we all agree with a desired end result.
We all want good health care, education, and human rights. I hope we have all gotten to understanding our need to be good stewards of our environment if we really want to continue to live in it. I have said often that it isn’t that someone is against something–it is the means to get to the something that people disagree on. That’s why I continue to be optimistic that with dialogue and by actually listening to the other point of view will result in much good.
Opinion, the wealth redistribution point of view was definitely shouted from the roof tops back in the day, although it wasn’t called that. The formula wasn’t implemented immediately, as I recall. I do think that heavily Democratic VEA was against it. Basically it robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. We sent our car and real estate revenues to Richmond and the almighty hand went into the coffers and took a little out here and a little out there for those poorer counties. In other words, NoVA was the sugar daddy for most of the rest of the state.
I have decided it isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. It is just an issue that needs fixing. If you have x number of dollars to plug into this formula, then a hardship variable needs to be plugged in for Northern Virgina. Or maybe we should consider seceding from Virginia. I often think we are our own state up here anyway. Interesting to see some of the more indenpendent counties–ones I (in my NoVA arrogance) would never think of.
Rez, I agree with you about dialogue. And I see it on this thread. We have all found common ground. We don’t need to actively have kids in the system either to want good schools. When we are parents of school age kids we see the trees. When we get past that perhaps we see the forest.
Peeing…one of the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, so thank you, Governor McDonnell for opening rest stops.
I agree with you all on strong schools, strong community. My kids certainly benefitted. Who could forget 7th grade Civicsville at Metz … science fairs with Janet Graham (despite a project that failed and smelled so bad we had to put it on the sun porch, my daughter’s now majoring in Biology at GMU) … and band & chorus from ES to HS. Don’t cut it! Music enhances spatial-temporal reasoning & math!
I’ll back up Poor Richard & contact Richmond.
@Moon-howler
Strategically, if a Republican Governor is in the chair… it’s a Republican issue. You play the hand you are dealt. I would say calling upon his Conservative base to turn up the heat is perfectly acceptable. If Deeds had won, I would recast the strategy.
I have long been a proponent of North Virginia as the 51st State. After all, West Virginia has already set the precedent for fundamental disagreements with Richmond. Why not follow them. Just bringing it up changes the tone of the conversation.
Wasn’t it PWC’s own former Delegate Rollins that pushed the
famous Potty Parity Bill in Richmond?
Oops, that of course was John Rollison III who introduced the bill
upon the urging of his wife. As I remembered he endured more
than a little ribbing from other delegates.
The battle over the Local Composite Index proposed freeze seems far
more of a regional conflict in Virginia than a fight between Democrats
and Republicans. Kaine and apparently now McDonnell support this
garbage. Where are our representatives? Scott, Bob, Jackson, Chuck?
Aren’t they suppose to protect the interest of our children?
How can they defend this outrage? Silence isn’t an answer.
Now, that’s one “infamous” bill I never heard of – but I get the basic drift of it, as anyone who has observed long lines outside of women’s rest rooms compared to men’s restrooms can probably attest to. I didn’t know someone actually tried to push through legislation, I suppose, to attempt to fix that problem.
It does indeed seem to be a regional conflict rather than a political party conflict, which makes it very interesting and even more complicated perhaps.
I will have everyone know that in spite of people’s perception of my being a fiscal conservative, I wrote the first study that led to the elimination of pay toilets at Washington National and Dulles Airports. Since they were operated by FAA at the time, other airports nationwide followed suit and eliminated pay toilets.
I can still remember the call 35 years ago from the wife of the president of the company that provided pay toilets for most airports if not all. Her husband had a heart attack and she accused me of trying to kill him.
Thank you for alerting me to this M-H. And thanks everyone for the insights. I was aware that NoVa was getting a raw deal with respect to state funds but I didn’t realize it was so systematic. I wonder if they expect us to raise local taxes to keep our schools up to standards. They probably assume, perhaps rightly, that we have more money up here. It is unfair, but in a tight budget crisis, everyone will be hurt some.
On the bright side, the Tea Party people are probably happy, as government run schools are too much of an intrusion on our “freedom.” If we have private schools instead we won’t have to worry about these things.
Witness Too,
In October 2009 (the most recent numbers I have),
46% of MCPS students were eligible for free or reduced cost lunches.
Hardly an indication of a school system and student body that
doesn’t need all the support it can get.
Manassas Park wasn’t on any list I saw. I can’t imagine that they are in any better shape.
Poor Richard really gets the credit for bringing this issue to the forefront on the blog.
both the resources for this article are Fairfax delegates.
Here is my letter to the Governor on this important subject.
Dear Bob-
As one of your strongest supporters in the recent election and an elected Republican, I regret the need to voice my dismay with your decision to defer the scheduled recalculation of the school funding Local Composite Index. I have heard no rationale for this decision. That forces our citizens/voters to assume that it is Richmond politics as usual. And as usual, the Northern Virginia citizen/voter will take it in the shorts for a decision made in Richmond.
If there is an economic reason behind the decision I urge you to go public with it as soon as possible. If there is not any economic reason then I urge you to change this decision.
You are off to a great start. please don’t allow this poor dicision to mar your record of success.
Mark Wolfe
Councilman, City of Manassas
Hello Mark, welcome. Thanks for sharing your letter with us. Often on a subject this complicated, letters are difficult to start. You have provided us with a good model.
FYI – Data Trends in MCPS (10-21-2009)
Student body:
% Black – 17.3
% Hispanic – 44.2
% White – 32.3
% Other – 6.2
MCPS students need and deserve a fair share of state funding.
Rez, that is some claim to fame. I will think of you every time I use the facilities at Dulles. 🙄
Poor Richard, I am shocked by those numbers. Do you have the comparables for the county?
Just out of curiosity, what group mainly comprises ‘other?’
I didn’t realize Dulles had pay toilets 35 years ago. I started flying out of there in 1981, but i guess by then the pay toilets were gone! Sounds like I only missed them by a few years.
M-H – No, I don’t have the PWC numbers.
– Assume “others” to be primarily Asian. Not sure MCPS has many
Pacific Islanders, Alaskan natives or American Indians, but I
could be wrong.
I’m not at all surprised by PR’s numbers for City of Manassas. I knew the Hispanics were the majority in the schools – that happened in the last couple of years. I am also not surprised by the 46% eligibility for at least partially subsidized lunches. Actually, I believe I saw these numbers somewhere else some time ago as they sound familiar. I did know that Hispanics had become the majority (or the biggest group – they aren’t really a majority in terms of being more than 50%) of the students in the Manassas school system.
It does show as PR says, that the schools need as much funding help from the state as they can get.
I bet “other” isn’t easy to characterize. It is just other ethnicities that don’t neatly fit in the “white”, “hispanic”, or “black” definitions. Possibly mixed ethnicities, that is some people don’t really identify themselves as one of those 3 groups since their parents are possibly of two of those groups. At least that’s what I would suspect, and seems to make sense. I think the census may face similar issues, or I don’t know how many choices it will give for people who possibly are of mixed ethinic ancestry.
Oh, I see, PR just gave a definition of “others” I hadn’t considered. I forgot about Asians, so that’s a good point!
According to the 2000 census (and things have changed greatly since then) – Asians were 3.4% of City of Manassas population.
Native Hawaiian or “other Pacific Islander” is just 0.1%.
American Indian and Alaskan (lumped in the same category for some reason) make up 0.8% believe it or not. I would never have guessed that number would have been that large. Probably most are American Indian – how many Alaskans do you suppose have found their way to the city of Manassas?
Also, “Some other race” was 9.7%. Things of course have changed since 2000. At that time Hispanics only represented 15.1% of the City of Manassas population. Shows you how much the Hispanic population has grown since then, which should be no surprise to anyone.
Someone just told me Middle eastern people.
The number of latinos surprises me because the county was only about 20-25% Latino.
The largest group at SJHS is Hispanic, but yuppie schools like Battlefield
have much smaller minority numbers — parts of the county match
Manassas City and MP, but they are balanced by the newer, wealthier
“white zones” around Gainesville and Haymarket.
I don’t think there are more Latinos than whites at SJHS.
The county has greater ability to change boundaries than the MC does.
The country still is about 20-25% Latino, even if the demographics are different school to school. It isn’t easy to get the demographics of each school.
I find these statistics odd since people have been talking about how many Latinos left the area. The school system has barely changed. I am asking how this can be?
Just got a note from Tom Rust, Republican Delegate for Herndon and Eastern Loudoun. He says he is absolutely against this short changing of NoVA on the LCI and that he and others are going to approach the Governor to try to get it altered. It does look to me like our own views on this ought to be sent right to the Governor’s Mansion.
Middle eastern people make sense too as being part of “Others”.
I am not surprised in the least by the 44.2% Hispanic number. It mirrors the proportion of Hispanics in Point of Woods. I guess if you lived in the city in some neighborhoods, that number would not surprise you at all.
Actually, while many people say Gainesville and Haymarket are “white” – there’s a fair number of “non-white” people at least in my neighborhood. I walk around the neighborhood a lot with my dog. I’d say it might be 10% Hispanic, 10-15% Black, 5-10% Asian, and there’s a good amount of “Other’ that I can’t really easily characterize – follks from India, etc. Now, other parts of Gainesville perhaps might not have these ratios, I suppose. It might be my neighborhood has a wide variety of housing ranging from affordable to expensive – currently you can find houses there from the upper 200’s to the upper 600’s. There may be some other neighborhoods that don’t have as much lower end affordable housing, and therefore might be less other ethnicities and a higher majority of “white” people.
Also on my street of 6 houses, 2 are Hispanic, 1 is Black, and the other 3 are White. A pretty nice mix of ethnicities actually. Everyone gets along great too. On an adjoining street where currently there are 12 houses built, but it is not completely built-out, there’s 2 Black families, and I think the rest are White but some have just moved in and I haven’t really gotten to know the more recent arrivals yet.
That’s a small sample, but gives you an idea of the mix. There are quite a few Hispanic families in the neighborhood though. Of course it is a big neighborhood – roughly 500 houses built so far and ultimately 650. So, even at 10%, that would make 50 Hispanic households. The more i think about it, I think 10% is a low estimate, as the parts of the neighborhood I know well, I can think of quite a few Hispanic families. I might want to raaise my estimate to 15% for Hispanics, but not quite sure.
The delegates from PWC and Fairfax aren’t the problem. They will all be on our side in a bi partisan effort to get the money back here. The problem is, until the new census, the delegates from RoVA outnumber the ones from NoVA and that is how things like this happen. Those RoVA delegates say “do we care about PWC and Fairfax getting less with growing student populations while we get more with shrinking students populations?” And their answer to themselves is “nope, we don’t care as long as we are getting more”
We consistently get the shaft with funding until redistricting gives NoVa more power.
The most irritating thing about this fight is that the schools that are shrinking are actually getting more. It adds insult to injury.
The school website has profiles for each school which gives demo breakdowns by school.
Anona, thanks. I never thought of looking on the school site. I found Stonewall High’s. I couldn’t find the Soaring Eagle stats.
Yes, we are getting the shaft and Wolverine makes a good point about directing comments to the governor’s mansion. Anona makes a good point about the people who are not NoVA delegates. Why should they care and there are more of them.
We very much got the shaft. Too bad Bobby MdD came out of the gate and stumbled on this one. NoVA doesn’t forget!
M-H- Go to the Virginia Department of Education site and click demographics
– it indicates that Hispanic students outnumber Whites at SJHS. My point
is that the PWC high schools with demographics like OHS have the same
challenges, but the schools in newer and wealthier areas help PWCS have
better system wide test results.
Note that SJHS has a higher drop-out rate than OHS, but both have
distorted numbers due to the state rules that declare if a student enters
your school for a month in the 10th Grade – you are charged with them
unless you receive official notification from another certified school that
the student has enrolled there. A highly mobile Hispanic population means
that that there are dozens of students that end up being officially
unaccounted for by 12th grade and are charged to the school as “drop outs”
even though they have moved up to two years earlier. It makes
a school’s numbers look bad through no fault of their own.
This has ALWAYS been the problem with Northern VA – the rest of the state has more power because their numbers are greater – and we always suffer as a result, from transportation issues to issues like this one. I don’t really see it changing much in the short term either.
“Geographically, Northern Virginia isn’t all that big, encompassing 7 per cent of
the state’s land area. Yet it’s an economic juggernaut that accounts for
almost half the state’s economic growth, more than half its new jobs
and nearly half its income tax revenue…. The region gets back only an
estimated 25 to 40 cents in revenue and services for each dollar it sends
to Richmond. If it were to secede, it would become the nation’s most
educated and affluent state.”
The Washingtonian (11-1-2008)
Secede!
Before they rob us blind and “Squirrel Heads and Gravy” becomes the
state song.