LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
LoudounNow
[ Vol. 4, No. 12 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
Calling all chocoholics
8
[ February 7, 2019 ]
Loudoun Strikes Out on State Transportation Funding BY RENSS GREENE
Patrick Szabo/Loudoun Now
Superintendent Eric Williams works with a student at Moorefield Station Elementary School.
‘Every Student Counts’
Adopted School Budget Targets Equity BY DANIELLE NADLER The Loudoun County School Board on Tuesday made the final tweaks to the spending plan recommended by Superintendent Eric Williams, adopting an operating budget for next fiscal year totaling $1.284 billion. The board added roughly $4 million to Williams’ proposal, but offset the additions by realizing $4.3 million in savings by adding a health insurance holiday, which will save both employees and the school system money. During that time, instead of paying into health insurance, that money will come from the school system’s insurance fund reserve, which Chairman Jeff Morse (Dulles) said is “ex-
tremely healthy.” Board members described many of their additions to the budget as efforts to improve the school system’s equity practices—from hiring a more diverse workforce and providing employees cultural competency training, to identifying more minority students for gifted and specialty programs. The most debated line item of the night was to create a position tasked with overseeing equity issues throughout the school system. Board members voted to add $200,000 to the budget for that new position, with the new employee’s specific tasks and who he or she would report to to be determined later. The new position is in addition to the $100,000
Williams had already requested to hire an equity and cultural competence specialist. Joy Maloney (Broad Run) was the lone dissenting vote on creating the position; she instead advocated a director-level equity position that would report to the superintendent. Vice Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan (Sterling) said an administration position charged with improving equity was long overdue—she requested one six years ago. “This isn’t just about race. It’s about every student and whatever their challenge is,” she said. “It’s a first step, it’s a small step, and it is a needed step.”
Virginia Department of Transportation is recommending that Loudoun County receive state funding for only one road project in the state’s annual Smart Scale grant program. In January, state transportation staff recommended only $1.3 million for Loudoun, toward a $5 million project for improvements along Rt. 50. That represents a significant fall in Loudoun’s fortunes since the previous round projects, when the county won almost $81 million in funding for seven projects, including two interchanges, one intersection, road improvements, a park-and-ride and transit buses. Loudoun had applied for funding for 11 projects. Last year, the county submitted 23 projects totaling more than $592 million to Smart Scale. The Smart Scale program targets projects that reduce the number of crashes, relieve congestion, improve access to jobs, address air quality and environmental concerns, and promote economic development. It is meant to provide the Commonwealth Transportation Board an objective system for scoring funding requests based on their actual need and impact. Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau (R-Dulles) said Loudoun’s poor fortune may be an artifact of the process used to score projects, which weighs every project against every other project in the state. Northern Virginia, which usually would score well for congestion relief, looked less impressive against a massive, $3.6 billion project to widen the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. Smart Scale’s “Benefit” score, an aggregate of all the project’s calculated benefits, was 74 for the bridge tunnel. No other project had even half of that score, and most were in single digits. While the Northern Virginia region still brought in almost $200 million in funding, about 21 percent of all funding statewide, the projects recommended through Smart Scale in the region favor mass transit, while Loudoun’s requests mostly included roads. Letourneau suggested running
SCHOOL BUDGET >> 41
FUNDING >> 43
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