Lost in the apparent compromise in Staunton over schools funding is whether or not the kids really win in the end.
Staunton City Council and the Staunton School Board have come to a détente over a $624,113 funding gap, and while the numbers have been made to work, it seems like so much inside baseball, with the agreement being about moving this shell here, that shell there, and at the end of the day, look, all balanced.
What’s missing from the post-agreement celebrations is the realization that school boards in Virginia, which are reliant on city councils, boards of supervisors and, down the line, the General Assembly for their funding, are handcuffed from being able to do what they really want to do to educate our kids.
All we really have here in Staunton is a school board that had already cut out a lot of what it wanted to properly compensate teachers and staff, to have the latest and best in textbooks and classroom materials, to build on its curricula to make sure that our kids are learning what the need to learn to get themselves ready for life in the 21st century, get that bare-bones budget into balance.
The city council in Staunton wants to crow about how it stepped up and fully funded the schools for the 2022-2023 school year; fact is, the school board had already cut everything out that it could, and the money people on both sides figured out a way to paper over the difference that was still there.
This isn’t a victory for the kids, a win-win for the school board and city council, anything worth writing home about.
Staunton will still spend well below the state average per pupil – the most up-to-date information from the Virginia Department of Education has the city spending 8.1 percent below the state average, 14.4 percent less than our neighbors in Albemarle County spend, and more than 40 percent less than localities in Northern Virginia spend.
So, we’re not spending even less, thanks to this great and wonderful compromise.
Whoopee.
Story by Chris Graham
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