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Rainy-day dollars
Rainy-day dollarsFor the life of us, we can't figure out whether the county school system is due a pat on the back for its superior planning, or a whack on the backside for its superior scamming.
School systems around the country are tightening their belts, girding for battle, hunkering down — pick your cliché — in the face of money problems that are verging on money crises.
The nation and commonwealth "have been shaken for two years by a severe housing crisis, an explosion of energy costs, rising food prices, a shaken financial system and a massive drop in state and local tax revenues," as our sister paper, Rappahannock News, put it in a front-page story last week.
The article detailed how the economic malaise is even starting to be felt in a community long assumed to have immunity from the economic ills that infect the rest of us.
Elsewhere, schools are eliminating bus routes, killing field trips, ratcheting back on sports, turning thermostats up in these warm days at the start of the new term, and planning to turn them down when leaves start to fall. In some jurisdictions, the school week has been shortened by a day.
And here? Nothing, as far as we can tell.
School officials are being amazingly cool in the midst of the turmoil affecting the rest of the nation, telling the Times-Democrat last week that there are no curtailment plans of any description, and that they will deal with fiscal shortfalls when and if and as they arise.
We can't escape the conclusion that if no real adjustments have to be made in order to cover sharply rising expenses, then school officials have built a considerable safety net into the budget.
They call it discretionary funding. Others might call it fluff.
Case in point: When Dr. Jonathan Lewis presented his proposed budget to the school board early this spring, fuel for the bus fleet was calculated at about $2.60 a gallon.
That was a figure that flabbergasted us at the time, in that gasoline and diesel had already topped that mark en route to $4 and close to $5 respectively.
Where's the money coming from to pay up at the pump? Discretionary funds.
The state's revenue picture will be clarified in October, when bean counters will be better able to project the size of the shortfall. That there will be a shortfall is certain, one that, at present, appears to be on the order of about $1 billion.
Core government services, including education, will almost certainly be in line for reduced state support.
The county, dependent as it is on real estate, is stretched to the snapping point.
Not only is there no new money pouring in, but the old money appears to be drying up. Meanwhile, costs are rising at an alarming rate.
Yet no reduction in services in our local schools is anticipated.
Mind you, we don't want our children denied, we don't want them to go to school four days a week, shivering whilst they study.
But we would like a little better sense of whether we should be applauding school officials for their planning acumen or taking them to task for stuffing the budget with a considerable excess of discretionary dollars.
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