ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 23, 1996 TAG: 9607230042
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
THE 1997 General Assembly may consider putting up $300 million for a major-league baseball stadium if the project's promoters can bring a major-league baseball team to Virginia.
But wait a minute. Just since 1990, lawmakers have robbed $362 million from the state's only funding resource for public-school construction. Virginia's estimated school-infrastructure needs now total $6.3 billion.
Don't we have a priority problem here?
The situation isn't necessarily either/or: play-ball or pay-back time. But, surely, state-funding sweeteners to attract ball teams should be more critically questioned while problems of overcrowded, dilapidated, even unsafe schools go unaddressed.
A new school-facility survey by the state's Department of Education shows that six out of every 10 schoolhouses in Virginia need major renovations or replacement. Nearly a third of all classrooms are overcrowded; half the schools rely on trailers to house the overflow. Hundreds of schools aren't accessible to handicapped students; harbor asbestos or other hazardous materials; lack proper power and wiring. Many have no fire alarms. Many more aren't set up for the kind of computer infrastructure that a proper education now requires.
Traditionally, school construction and maintenance have been left to local governments - and localities should retain primary responsibility for school buildings.
But as the education department's report observed, ``In some localities, property taxes could double and still not generate the revenue needed to meet projected debt service for a modern school infrastructure.'' And even as projects to upgrade or replace existing schools are postponed, an estimated 7,900 new classrooms will be needed over the next five years because of enrollment increases.
If for no other reason, disparities in wealth among local school divisions make this a state concern and argue for a state role in helping to fund bricks-and-mortar needs - a role already assumed by 32 other states. And there's another reason: The state helped create the crisis.
The Virginia Literary Fund, financed by court-imposed fines and unclaimed-property assets, has long made low-interest loans available for school construction. Because the loans are repaid and the money recirculates, it once was a fairly constant revenue source for localities.
Then the legislature started dipping into it to balance the state budget, etc. - and never repaid what it ``borrowed.'' In this decade, lawmakers institutionalized the theft - taking virtually all of the funds for teachers' retirement payments from 1991 to 1995, and a significant part ($41 million) this year. The legislature's draining of the fund is one cause of the huge backlog of school needs.
The General Assembly can do this:
Raise the $5 million-per-project limit that localities can borrow. (Few new schools can be built for $5 million.) Replenish the Literary Fund - gradually over the next five years, if not all at once - by the $362 million taken since 1990. Henceforth, swear off using it as a honey pot for purposes other than schools' capital needs.
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