WJC Schools Not Fully Funded in the Proposed County Budget

April 29, 2006

Dear School Supporters,

The James City County Board of Supervisors will be discussing funding for WJC Schools at a work session on Monday, May 1. If you have not already, please contact the supervisors and ask them to fully the schools' operating and capital budget requests. CLICK HERE to send a message to all supervisors. If that does not work here are the addresses:

andybrad@james-city.va.us
jjmcgl@james-city.va.us
jicenhour@james-city.va.us
harrison@james-city.va.us
bgoodson@james-city.va.us

Below is my statement to the supervisors at the April 25 public hearing discussing the unmet needs.

Thank you for supporting our schools.

Mike Ludwick

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First of all, thank you to the Board for your direction of staff as the budget was prepared and to Mr. Wanner for the funds allocated to the schools in the proposed budget. These funds are critical to maintaining the high quality of our school division and your support is greatly appreciated.

As you are aware the schools' requested budget is not fully funded. About $638,000 on the operating side and about $616,000 on the capital side. Please keep in mind those individuals and groups who have spoken at meetings and sent emails asking you to fully fund the schools' requests. All these funds are needed.

In fact, as you saw in the Option 1 budget that the superintendent created, the school board had other needs such as buses, trailers, preschool teachers, operating capital, that it did not even request. So it may not seem like they let you off easy, but they did.

Other growing divisions to the north, Fauquier, Culpeper, Orange, Prince William, Spotsylvania, Loundon and Frederick all proposed increases in excess of 12%. Fauquier's was 16%; Frederick County, 19.4%.

I read recently that Hampton gave the schools $600,000 more than requested. While using a formula can be dangerous, the principle of providing more than what was requested sounds very good to me.

To at least make up the difference you may be able to increase the revenue projections for the property tax or sales tax. Perhaps look to any contingency in the budget or fund balance, or other options that would allow for full funding.

Thank you for your support of our schools and please fully fund the schools operating and captial budgets.