ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 18, 1996 TAG: 9607180045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
School maintenance and construction needs exceed $6.3 billion statewide, roughly equal to the amount to be spent on all of public education over the next two years, according to a state report.
``In some localities, property taxes could double and still not generate the revenue needed to meet projected debt service for a modern school infrastructure,'' said the Department of Education school facilities survey released Tuesday.
With enrollments rising, local school divisions are borrowing a record $4.1 billion to renovate facilities and build schools. However, more than a third of schools' capital needs - $2.2 billion - continue to go unmet.
``We cannot expect our children to learn in an environment of broken desks, peeling paint, poor lighting and crumbling schoolhouses,'' Lt. Gov. Don Beyer said in opening Tuesday's inaugural meeting of the General Assembly's Commission on Educational Infrastructure. ``Unfortunately, all too often this is the reality of our children's learning environment.''
Local tax revenues are inadequate in many districts to meet the projected debt service required to upgrade and replace existing schools, let alone build the 7,900 new classrooms needed over the next five years to accommodate increasing enrollments, the state report said.
``I think what we're going to hear after all this is that the state role is going to have to increase if we're to meet these needs,'' said James W. Dyke Jr., a commission member and former secretary of education.
In Virginia, localities pay for school renovations and construction from local taxes. The state has made low-interest loans available to localities through the Literary Fund, but it has been repeatedly raided through the years to finance other state needs.
That raiding climaxed in the early 1990s when all of the Literary Fund's revenues were used to cover teachers' retirement payments. That meant there was no school construction money from 1991 to early 1995.
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