ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 3, 1996 TAG: 9612030066
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: reporter's notebook
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE
Quicker than the Christmas rush and more ominous than the chilly winds of December, the yearly deliberations over school funding are upon us.
In Montgomery County, the School Board is beginning to make its list - they'll be checking it more than twice - for its own Santa Claus, the Board of Supervisors.
Sometimes seen as generous, sometimes stingy, the supervisors inevitably will take the heat for whatever funds end up under the schools' proverbial budget tree. More than likely, some parent or teacher observing these negotiation dances will ask aloud, "Why can't the School Board have control over its own budget?"
Supervisor Jim Moore has asked this more than once, indicating he'd like the School Board to get a taste of what it's like to be a financially limited Santa who must accommodate thousands of demanding taxpayers.
Nationwide, 97 percent of all school boards are elected, according to the Virginia School Board Association. Three-fourths of those boards have their own power to tax.
The General Assembly might consider a constitutional amendment that provides fiscal autonomy to local school boards, though it's doubtful such a change would make it through the relatively conservative legislature.
Still, it's interesting to consider the changes. How would the state compensate for poorer counties? Would having two separate taxing groups - a governing county board or city council plus a school board - increase confusion and cost? Would residents be more vocal about how their tax dollars were being used in schools? Would independence eliminate the political bickering so rampant in many budget battles?
"School board members are probably the most beat upon public officials there are," said Paul Whalen, a veteran school board member in Fort Thomas, Ky.
Whalen has served 10 years in the small suburban city just across the river from Cincinnati. Every school board in Kentucky has been fiscally independent (as well as elected) for decades, and Whalen said he wouldn't change a thing.
Fort Thomas receives about half its funding from local property tax revenue. It can raise that by 4 percent each year without voter approval, and without conferring with the city.
The few times the board has held a public hearing on a tax increase or change, Whalen said, few people have shown up to protest. Still, he said he knows people - especially senior citizens - are concerned. He said the school system faces a great deal of pressure to produce students able to compete in a world economy, all at a minimal price.
Whalen said he likes being independent of the city's budget, but political maneuvering is intense - on the local and the state level. Reductions of federal and state support, along with efforts to equalize all school systems within the state, have forced the board to raise taxes. This week, in fact, the Fort Thomas board will announce its plans to levy a 3 percent utilities tax to offset state funding reductions.
To have a successful budget, he said, a school board must be willing to sit in that hot seat, raise taxes and convince the public that investing in education is worth it.
Words to negotiate by, even for those supervisors and board members with visions of independence dancing through their heads.
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