November 24, 2008

Millions of dollars collected from taxes may have been given to the wrong schools in Virginia.

Many of the school divisions in Virginia may have been shorted a lot of money, including local districts, because they counted wrong.

That's the conclusion of a new study from the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. It shows that tax allocations to local school divisions may be unfair, because of inaccurate census counts.

School divisions have to do a census every three years to count the kids aged 5 to 19 in their division. That number is used to allocate tax money to the schools based on the number of children living in their district. There is no standard way they have to do the count, so some districts may be missing out.

Susan Perrone, Demographer at the Weldon Cooper Center, says, "the pot of money is the same for the entire state and the question is are we slicing the pie the way it should be sliced?"

A new study she worked on says no. Estimates from the Weldon Cooper Center show about 17 million dollars was mis-allocated. That money went to school divisions that counted too many children.

"If the money had been distributed the way it should have been, each school division across the state should have received in 2007 approximately $770 per child," Perrone explains.

The actual amount school divisions received ranged from $580 to $930 per child.

For example, the study shows Greene County Schools missed about 500 of their 5 to 19 year old students, so they got about $100 less per child than they should have.

They are not alone. The study shows, of the 98 localities, two thirds of them under-counted their school age population. Only four school divisions had accurate census counts including Nelson County.

Perrone is proposing that schools be allowed to use estimates from the Cooper Center, but that would mean the state law would have to change.

They took the report to the education subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee, and they're planning to send it to all members of the General Assembly.

Perrone says the census can be very expensive for schools. Fairfax County budgeted $600,000 for theirs.

She says Albemarle County and Charlottesville schools were not counted in the study.