Nearly $50 million in cuts planned for northern Virginia school district
By Harvey Simpkins
4 July 2017
In
late May the Fairfax County, Virginia school board adopted its $2.8 billion
budget for the 2017-2018 school year. The board’s budget included $50 million
in cuts from its initial proposed budget.
Fairfax
County has the third highest median income among all counties in the United
States. Nevertheless, the cuts in the county, just outside of Washington, DC,
underscore the fact that even relatively better-off areas are struggling to
provide inadequate funding for basic social services.
Due
to the cuts, Fairfax County will hire fewer teachers than expected, with a
resultant increase in class sizes for the upcoming school year. In addition,
the school system will charge students a $50 fee for participating in
after-school activities.
The
2017-2018 budget reductions come on the heels of steep cuts in the previous
school year when the district faced a $70 million deficit. In fact, the school
system has made cuts every year since 2008. Due to the budget issues, Fairfax
County has struggled to offer competitive salaries to teachers, resulting in a
50 percent turnover rate in the first five years of employment. At the start of
the 2015-16 school year, there were 200 vacant teacher positions.
Prior
to the cuts, class sizes in Fairfax County were already among the highest in
the DC region. In 2016-2017, the average elementary school class size was 22.4
students per classroom teacher. Middle and high school class sizes were 24.6
and 25.8 respectively. With the cuts, the board says average class sizes will
grow by about half a student.
In
addition to school cuts, due to budget woes, Fairfax County cancelled a 1.65
percent “market rate adjustment” salary increase for county employees, deferred
facility upgrades, sidewalk/trail maintenance, eliminated a program that
allowed people with mental health issues to get treatment instead of jail time,
and underfunded by $6.7 million a program for employment and day services used
by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Seventy-two
percent of the school system’s funding comes from county tax revenues, with
most of that from real estate taxes. The county has faced a declining real
estate tax base in recent years, with average home values flat and office real
estate values declining in 2016. The county also has a high office vacancy
rate, with more than 20 million square feet empty out of the available 116.4
million square feet.
To
raise additional revenues, instead of raising taxes on the wealthy or
corporations, Fairfax County proposed a regressive meals tax, which was put up
for referendum in the November 2016 election. The proposal called for an
additional four percent tax on prepared food and beverages. The measure was
defeated.
A
large part of the decade-long revenue shortfall for the school system is due to
substantial reductions in state funding for Virginia schools. Since 2010 the
state government has cut $6 billion in funding for K-12 education.
On
the federal level, Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal calls for $9.2
billion in spending cuts for education, a 13.5 percent reduction from 2017.
Among the proposed cuts nationally are the elimination of a $2.3 billion
program for teacher training and class-size reduction, the elimination of a
$1.2 billion after-school academic enrichment program, which serves nearly 2
million children, and the elimination of a $190 million literacy program.
Trump’s
austerity measures follow eight years of the attacks on public education by the
Obama administration, which used federal dollars to encourage cash-strapped
school districts to expand for-profit charter schools, push merit pay schemes
on teachers and other corporate-backed “school reforms.”
As
the Trump administration slashes educational funding, it will sharply increase
military spending. On June 22, both the House and Senate and Armed Services
Committees proposed a $706 billion military budget, nearly $100 billion higher
than the 2017 budget. Fairfax County is home to numerous military contractors,
including Raytheon, BAE Systems, SAIC, and Booz Allen Hamilton. According to
the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, in 2015, $9.4 billion in
federal procurement contracts were awarded to Fairfax County businesses to
directly support the US Army, Air Force and Navy.
At
the same time the defense giants have been handed hundreds of millions in tax
abatements and other incentives by state and local governments at the expense
of the public schools and other essential services. The financial starvation of
education and other social programs in even the wealthiest districts is yet
another exposure of the fraudulent claim that the US is experiencing an “economic
recovery.”
….. the American Middle-Class at death’s door and knocking
Have you notice Democrat Party politicians always keep their fat mouths
closed tight on the topic of the Mexican drug cartels operating across
America???
THE DEATH OF AMERICA: MEXICO SERVES
UP THE HEROIN.
In West Virginia, 5,182 children were in foster care in
2016, most orphaned by the heroin epidemic.
The death toll translates into an
average of one fatal overdose every 12 hours in the state of West Virginia.
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