“I don’t want to cut your budget … but I don’t see how we cannot cut this budget,” Mathews supervisor Janice Phillips said during a joint work session Friday morning with members of the Mathews County School Board as the two boards reviewed the school division’s FY26 budget request.
Several other supervisors also indicated that some cuts would be necessary in the budget that was adopted by the school board last month. The board of supervisors is expected to approve the county’s overall operating budget (including schools), and set the accompanying real estate and personal property tax rates, at its April 17 regular meeting.
The $18.17 million budget approved by the school board on Feb. 18 calls for a county contribution of $10.14 million, an increase of $404,000 from the current budget, in spite of plans for the county to take over some of the school building maintenance expenses, such as heating, lighting and sewage, through a Memorandum of Understanding agreement. The school division would still be responsible for custodial services and grounds maintenance, among other things.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. David S. Daniel indicated when the school board adopted its budget back in February that the planned consolidation of maintenance costs would result in a net change to the division of about $600,000.
The school division’s FY26 budget is based on an enrollment of 725 students. The FY25 budget was based on an Average Daily Membership of 800 students.
Mathews schools have experienced a steady decline in enrollment over the last 20+ years, topping out in the 2003-2004 school year with 1,298 students, falling in each subsequent year with a more dramatic fall taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic years.
Some of the main drivers in the budget increase include a 5 percent salary increase (4 percent plus one step on the salary scale), amounting to $566,000, and health insurance premium increases of more than $366,000. The budget calls for the division to pick up all of the additional health care costs.
Daniel’s budget includes an expected drop in state funding of more than $166,000, although the final budget amount has yet to be approved by the General Assembly.
The school budget also includes three new positions. One of those would be a new reading specialist for grades 6-8, which is state mandated as the Virginia Department of Education continues the implementation of the Virginia Literacy Act requirements. That person, Daniel explained, would work with faculty on the science of reading, as well as working in small groups with students who are struggling.
The cost to the division for this new position is slightly under $92,500, with the state expected to pick up only $5,000 (or 0.08 percent) of that cost, Daniel said. “So, the state is going to say ‘Yeah, we’re providing funding for these reading specialists,’ but …”
Supervisors’ chair Tim Doss asked Daniel how the superintendent would accommodate a 10 percent cut in the budget that was approved by the school board. “The two areas are going to be people and programs,” Daniel said. Personnel, he said, accounts for “75, 76 percent of our budget.”
The first piece, he said, would be looking at not filling some vacancies that take place. He said he would scale back the pay increase and consider passing on some of the health insurance costs to employees. “The last piece,” he said, “would be a reduction in force.”
On the program side, he indicated that he would review participation in out-of-division programs, such as welding, the Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School, NJROTC and nursing, athletics, field trips, etc.
Phillips suggested that the school board might want to reconsider across-the-board pay increases, focusing instead on teachers, where there is a greater competition regionally for employees. She spoke of the 6 percent raises given this past year.
“The reason that 6 percent was given was because we are competing with what’s going on in school systems around us,” she said. “We do have to do that for our teachers. I’m not sure we need to be doing that for every staff member.”
A number of other issues were brought up related to attracting and retaining teachers to the community, such as the availability of affordable housing and the lack of businesses and activities to lure young people to locate here.
Supervisor Dave Jones pointed out that right now in Virginia, the average cost of K-12 education per student is $16,445/year. The budget presented by Daniel, he said, would provide $25,058 per student.
“In my world, those numbers do not lie,” Jones said. “Maybe a lot of it has to do with the Local Composite Index.”
LCI is the formula the state uses to calculate a locality’s ability to pay for its education needs, and how much basic aid is awarded by the state. The current LCI for Mathews County for the 2024-2026 biennium is .5904, which means that for every dollar of a Standards of Quality position that needs to be funded, the county is expected to pick up 59 cents. And, as Daniel said, “no division I know of staffs at the SOQ model.”
The LCI model uses a locality’s value of real property, adjusted gross income and other factors to determine the number. The LCI for West Point Schools, for instance, is .2489, while Gloucester’s is .3999, meaning that the educational tax burden falls much more heavily on Mathews County residents. Middlesex County’s LCI is slightly higher than Mathews (.6938), topping out at .8.
Members of both boards agreed that increased pressure needs to be placed on the area’s representatives in Richmond to change the state’s funding formula and join other affected localities in the Middle Peninsula, Northern Neck and elsewhere to lobby for a change.