By Calvin Pynn, contributor
State funding for next fiscal year seems to be on track for Harrisonburg City Public Schools, but school leaders are less certain about federal funding.
That was the message Superintendent Michael Richards gave during an update on the budget at the city school board’s business meeting Tuesday night. He started with the good news: that the state budget that Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed included all of the education components that Richards was hoping would be approved.
“The budget that we presented is intact, in terms of state funding, which is a very good thing,” Richards said.
That included the removal of a funding cap on how many support staff positions a school division can hire, such as social workers, custodians and food service staff. Richards said state leaders added that cap in 2008 to alleviate budget concerns in light of the recession that year.
“That has been in existence for a long time, and we’ve all wanted to remove it and we’re all grateful it has been,” Richards said.
But Richards’ update on federal funding for next fiscal year was less optimistic, as proposals from President Donald Trump’s administration include cuts to K-12 education. Among the largest cuts are Title III programs, which support English language learners which, for HCPS, is typically more than $300,000.
“We are nervous about federal funding at this point,” Richards said.
He pointed out that Title I funding — which supports low-income students — and IDEA, or “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” funding remain in the administration’s budget proposals. While the education budget cuts are awaiting congressional approval, Richards added that, if passed, funding for those programs would be at the state’s discretion in the form of block grants.
“That would mean that we would rely on the state to do the right thing with that money, so I’ll leave it there,” Richards said.
Following the budget update, the board’s vice chair, Tim Howley, reported that he and Chair Emma Phillips met with Republican U.S. Rep. Ben Cline last month. The meeting followed the board’s adoption of a resolution passed in March raising concerns about eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. They also discussed ramifications of a bill to dismantle the department, which Cline has co-sponsored.
“We left the meeting agreeing to disagree with the role of the Department of Education,” Howley said. “We feel the Department of Ed., at the federal level, does a good job of disseminating that money and our school system in particular benefits from those funds.”
He stressed that the aforementioned $300,000 in funding would be a significant loss for the city’s schools if the cuts go through.
“That means $300,000 that we’d have to get from our city, or not have. And then that means positions or, that make our school system function as well as it does.”
Howley told the board that, despite differing views, Cline said he wants to see full funding for Harrisonburg city schools and other school divisions across the 6th Congressional District, which Cline represents. In order to do that, Howley urged the public to advocate for federal education funding to their representatives in Congress, which in Harrisonburg includes Cline, and Democratic U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.
“I would encourage everybody to voice your opinions — those emails, those phone calls. It may feel like they go unnoticed, but they get tallied and they matter,” Howley said. “In Harrisonburg, that federal funding counts a lot. Let’s make sure that we’re not quiet, and we make some good noise for Harrisonburg.”
A non-update on Massanutten Technical Center
During the Superintendent’s Comments portion of the meeting, Richards said talks over HCPS’s partnership with Rockingham County Public Schools in managing Massanutten Technical Center are paused for the moment.
The board unanimously voted last month to reject requests from RCPS’s board to reduce HCPS’s voting power on the committee that governs MTC, among other changes. Richards said he has not heard back from the county’s school board nor the district’s superintendent, Larry Shifflett, regarding the response.
The Rockingham County school board has met twice since the city school board’s vote responding to their changes, but the matter has yet to appear on the county school board’s meeting agenda.
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