THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110645
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALETA PAYNE AND VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
School officials estimate that the financially troubled division will receive $800,000 to $900,000 less from the state than budgeted because they projected 390 more students than showed up this year.
``We will see less state aid than we would have expected,'' interim Superintendent James L. Pughsley said.
Public school enrollment is up across the South Hampton Roads. But for Virginia Beach, still grappling with a $7.4 million shortfall from the 1994-95 fiscal year, the numbers are not up enough.
The overestimation of enrollment comes at a bad time. The school district has weathered the largest financial crisis in its history and a devastating high school fire while searching for a permanent replacement for former Superintendent Sidney L. Faucette. Faucette left this summer to head a Georgia school district.
Pughsley said he will offer alternatives for dealing with the enrollment shortfall when he presents an overview of the 1995-96 budget to the School Board at its meeting Tuesday.
After the budget crisis surfaced, school officials announced plans to scrutinize this year's numbers to prevent a repeat. Besides the $800,000 or so that must be cut for enrollment reasons, the division is likely to have to reduce spending to cover an overestimation of federal aid of at least $2 million.
Because state funding is calculated per student, school budgeting relies on projecting enrollment as accurately as possible. Even if enrollment goes up, a division can come up short of money if it overestimates the increase. When in doubt, most planners err on the side of underestimating. Enrollment figures taken at the end of September and again in late March are submitted to the state to allot education money.
Other local school divisions saw enrollments come in at or above projections. Suffolk, Portsmouth and Norfolk all ended up with more students than they expected. In Chesapeake, a slight drop from projections was expected to have no budget impact.
Virginia Beach, however, has had problems predicting how many students to expect, overestimating or underestimating that number in recent years. Those miscalculations apparently contributed to the $7.4 million shortfall.
Even though this year's projections were 99.5 percent accurate, the small difference translates into big money for the state's second-largest school division.
``Every dollar makes a difference,'' Pughsley said.
Donald A. Peccia, the assistant superintendent whose responsibilities have included the division's finance office since August, has not returned repeated messages left over the past six weeks.
For Beach high schools and special programs, such as the Literacy Center and Open Campus, the numbers exceeded expectations. Middle schools came in only slightly below projections. But the elementary grades were off by more than 600 students, about half at the kindergarten level, Pughsley said.
Although the division calculated enrollment numbers more conservatively than in recent years, Pughsley said kindergarten numbers can be particularly difficult to estimate because they involve students who have not been in the public schools before.
In Norfolk, where total enrollment plunged more than 700 students two years ago, high school numbers were also higher than expected last month, according to budget director Forrest ``Hap'' White Jr. He said preliminary estimates showed the division could get an additional $825,000 in state money based on actual enrollment.
Norfolk already has added 15 full-time teachers to handle the additional students, he said.
Portsmouth's numbers have also declined in recent years. In 1990-91, the division enrolled 18,249 students. At the end of last month, the district reported 17,901 students, 427 more than anticipated.
Portsmouth education leaders, still coping with the ripple effect of a $1 million cut in the city's share for schools, hope to make do with the current staff.
``We're still evaluating where the increases are, but we've already shifted some teachers from schools that did not have large increases'' in enrollment, said Sidney J. Duck III, an assistant superintendent.
The Suffolk district, in the midst of one of its biggest enrollment increases ever, experienced a 5 percent increase in students on the eighth day of school, up to 10,107, as of early September. In previous years, annual increases ranged from 1 percent to 2 percent.
With thousands of first-time home buyers and others moving to the rural city, there are no signs that growth will ease up. In its latest 10-year capital-improvement plan, the School Board called for six new schools.
If Suffolk's 1995-96 increase levels off at 200 students, the district would get $525,000 in additional state aid, said the division's chief financial officer, Michael Brinkley. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
ENROLLMENT IN HAMPTON ROADS SCHOOL SYSTEMS
Enrollment as of Sept. 30 Estimated number of students
above or below projections
Norfolk 37,073 326 above
Chesapeake 34,979 49 below
Virginia Beach 76,647 390 below
Portsmouth 17,901 427 above
*Note: Suffolk's fall 1995 enrollment figure as of Sept. 30 was
unavailable Tuesday. Its enrollment figure for early September was
10,107. The figure for Sept. 30, 1994, was 9,622.
Source: School districts
by CNB