Jan 29 2010
Message from BoS Chairman on needing community help
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Dear Friend,
My fellow citizens, please take the time to read this as we need your help!
In Governor Kaine’s FY11 fiscal budget proposal he recommended that the Local Composite Index (LCI) biennial adjustment be frozen for the 2011 fiscal year budget. The LCI is the measure used to determine state and local shares of K-12 funding in Virginia. The formula uses data (growth in student population, local income, retail sales and property values) to determine a locality’s ability to pay for its schools. It is part of the routine distribution for education funding that occurs every two years. While imperfect, the LCI has been Virginia’s accepted measure of local ability to pay for k-12 education for many years!
Why do we need your help? This arbitrary freeze will mean a loss to Loudoun County of $34,356,421!
This year the LCI adjustment, if not frozen, would help Loudoun County at a time when we have the largest growing student population in the Commonwealth. Loudoun School’s will see an increased enrollment of 3,351 students. Yet, if the LCI is frozen then Virginia Beach becomes the top recipient by getting an additional $14,803,612 at a time when their school system will see a reduction of 524 students.
If that was not enough, as a region, Northern Virginia collectively will lose $122,400,000 in state funding, while adding 10,263 new students. At the same time, school divisions benefiting under the proposed freeze will receive an additional $114,000,000 while collectively educating a projected 2,300 fewer students. This is hardly fair and is totally unacceptable!
While the Loudoun Board of Supervisors, the School Board, our counterparts in the region, and our state delegation are working on this issue, we need your help NOW!
Please take a few minutes to contact the Governor’s office by going to the following link to Governor McDonnell’s online e-mail form, http://www.governor.virginia.gov/TheAdministration/contactGovernor.cfm or by calling 804-786-2211 and tell the Governor that the arbitrary freeze on the Local Composite Index is wrong and that Richmond needs to honor this long standing funding formula!
Also, please pass this message along to your family, friends and neighbors and ask them to do the same. We cannot allow this to happen!
Thank you and God Bless,
Scott K. York
Chairman,
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors
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