
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991                   TAG: 9103190395
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A TIMELY LESSON ABOUT SCHOOLS

HARD TIMES aren't fun. But at least they're providing Southwest Virginians a lesson: The level of tax-generated revenue that goes into a local-government budget has a bearing on the level of public services that comes out.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the current struggles of local school boards to perform triage on their budgets, to decide what must be sacrificed in the face of cutbacks in state funding and the unwillingness of local governing bodies to take up the slack.

The schools in, say, Roanoke County, Pulaski County and Roanoke city are as different as the clienteles they serve. Yet for all the differences, the fundamental trouble is the same:

Because the governor and legislature won't raise state taxes, all three localities - like virtually every other in the state - will get fewer state education dollars for the 1991-92 school year than they are getting this year.

Not simply less money than previously forecast. Not simply less after inflation is taken into account. Just plain less - $1.6 million less in Roanoke County (or $1.9 million if projected enrollment growth is taken into account); $1.5 million less in the city of Roanoke; $500,000 less in Pulaski County.

So long as raising local taxes is similarly taboo, county supervisors and city councils at best will compensate only partly for the state cutbacks.

Roanoke County could come pretty close - but not if the supervisors stick to plans to lower the real-estate tax rate from $1.15 to $1.13 per $100 of assessed value, a revenue loss of $570,000 annually. In the city of Roanoke, each penny increase in the real-estate tax rate of $1.25 would add a mere 67 cents to the monthly payments of the owner of an $80,000 home - but $250,000 to city revenues.

True, the trouble is primarily the fault of declines in state, not local, funding. But that's no reason for local officials to wash their hands of it. It is their localities and their constituents who will suffer the consequences.

The effect of the cutbacks is real and immediate. And not just frills are at risk.

In all three localities, years of work at improving teacher salaries is being undone. All three assume no school pay raises for next year - and in all three, even that austerity won't be enough.

In the city, additional "solutions" in the basic school budget range from eliminating a dropout-prevention program to increasing the pupil-teacher ratio to eliminating all but self-funding elective summer-school courses.

In its budget deliberations, the Roanoke County School Board has talked about raising student fees on textbook rentals and materials, which ought to be free in the first place, and even reducing salaries.

In Pulaski County, a tentative budget delays new textbook adoptions, eliminates duty-free lunch periods for teachers and introduces a schoolbus lease-purchase system that will save money next year but cost more in the long run.

In flush times, the link between government-budget input and output is often overlooked. Economic growth masks the relationship. Tax rates can stay the same, sometimes even decline, and still provide enough money to maintain the health of such essential services as the public schools.

In times like the present, the question emerges in starker clarity. To what extent are Southwest Virginians willing to tax themselves to maintain, let alone improve, the quality of their schools?

by CNB