THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603090009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Local school districts received a bit of good news and bit of bad last week from Washington when the House of Representatives narrowly approved an appropriations bill which includes impact aid to schools.
Passage of the bill, after months of budget wrangling, was the good news.
The bad news is that the amount approved was 95 percent of what schools received last year, whittling federal aid to education.
Impact aid isn't a handout to local school districts. It is money owed localities by the federal government. Impact aid is supplied to local school districts from Washington to help educate the children of military families. The rationale is that by having military installations in their midst, localities are deprived of taxes they would reap if the property were in private hands. Military bases do not pay local taxes.
The importance of impact aid to Hampton Roads schools should not be underestimated. The region is earmarked for about $14 million in federal dollars: $8.3 million for the financially strapped Virginia Beach schools, $3.7 million for Norfolk, $1.5 million for Chesapeake, $785,000 for Portsmouth and about $30,000 for Suffolk.
Virginia Beach and Norfolk are among Virginia's school districts which most rely on federal impact aid.
The U.S. Senate, which is expected to vote on the same appropriations bill later this week, will probably pass it. But President Clinton has threatened to veto the bill because it slashes funds from other federal education programs.
In other words, local school districts have inched a bit closer to receiving some of the funding to which they are entitled, but they should be cautious in their spending until the money is in hand.
As Joe Lowenthal, spokesman for the Virginia Beach schools, said: ``We're still several steps away from seeing the check in the mail.'' by CNB