Waynesboro is growing. Since 2010, the city’s population has increased by nearly 14 percent. Enrollment in Waynesboro Public Schools is trending upward. Property values have risen. The tax base is expanding. By any measure, this city is on an upward trajectory.
This is exactly the wrong moment to cap school funding.
Waynesboro City Council is proposing to limit annual increases to the school division’s budget to 3 percent, regardless of what actual costs require. The current formula, honored for 20 years, allocates 42.5 percent of the city’s discretionary revenue to its schools. It isn’t a generous formula. But it is a functional one, and it is designed to move with the city’s growth. The proposed cap severs that connection.
About the Author
- Ashley Short resides in Waynesboro
In most years over the past two and a half decades, costs have risen faster than 3 percent. That means in most years, this cap would not hold the line. It would cut. And when school budgets are cut, the losses are not abstract. Specialized teachers go. Programs go. The students who depend most on those resources, students in special education programs, students whose only access to arts and athletics is through their school, absorb the impact first and hardest.
School quality does not exist in isolation from a city’s economic future. Families choosing where to live evaluate schools. Businesses evaluating where to locate evaluate schools. The communities that attract investment and retain young families are the ones that demonstrate a commitment to public education, not just in good years, but structurally, through the decisions they build into their budgets.
Waynesboro has spent 20 years building something. The funding formula is a promise the city made to its residents and its children. Capping it doesn’t protect taxpayers from growth. It protects the status quo from accountability.
A cap is a cut. And a city that is growing deserves schools that can grow with it.
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