why are the school systems broke

[Anonymous]

Could someone please explain to me why the schools are broke? What happen to the lottery? Who paid for school before the lottery? Sounds corrupt to me.

[Anonymous]

so I guess like me, no one understands why we are loosing our schools, overcrowding our schools and the lottery money is going to who knows where. Scary.

[Anonymous]

the schools are "broke" because the county budgets are down because property tax collections are down. that is where the majority of education funding comes from, not the lottery.

[Anonymous]

The Lottery thing is bogus. They only give money to the schools to give the lottery a bit of respectability. But as the pp said, property taxes pay for school systems.

[Anonymous]

Ditto - our property tax assessment is about 30% lower than 2007. Our actual tax is rather stable, because the rate is going up. However, stable is a big difference from the 5 -10% per year increases the county is accustomed to getting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ditto - our property tax assessment is about 30% lower than 2007. Our actual tax is rather stable, because the rate is going up. However, stable is a big difference from the 5 -10% per year increases the county is accustomed to getting.

Our actual tax is increasing. These big school districts have lots of politics and "protected" programs. Construction costs and scope are quite different and less scrutinized by the public than in small districts.

[Anonymous]

Because of high unemployment and underemployment, people are paying less in income tax. I don't know about DC, but counties and states are required to have balanced budgets. So counties are forced, after several years of much lower revenues, to start making cuts that the public starts to see and feel (up until then it's usually done through hiring freezes, salary freezes, and furloughs of existing employees).

Government "recessions" always occur a year or so after the private sector as it starts to realize significantly reduced revenues, or "income." And it will take a year or so after everyone else recovers before government recovers too.

Federal stimulus money significantly helped local school systems last year, and to some extent this year. But it's mostly gone for FY11.

~~signed, government budget analyst

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because of high unemployment and underemployment, people are paying less in income tax. I don't know about DC, but counties and states are required to have balanced budgets. So counties are forced, after several years of much lower revenues, to start making cuts that the public starts to see and feel (up until then it's usually done through hiring freezes, salary freezes, and furloughs of existing employees).

Government "recessions" always occur a year or so after the private sector as it starts to realize significantly reduced revenues, or "income." And it will take a year or so after everyone else recovers before government recovers too.

Federal stimulus money significantly helped local school systems last year, and to some extent this year. But it's mostly gone for FY11.

~~signed, government budget analyst

Wow - thanks for this info!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because of high unemployment and underemployment, people are paying less in income tax. I don't know about DC, but counties and states are required to have balanced budgets. So counties are forced, after several years of much lower revenues, to start making cuts that the public starts to see and feel (up until then it's usually done through hiring freezes, salary freezes, and furloughs of existing employees).

Government "recessions" always occur a year or so after the private sector as it starts to realize significantly reduced revenues, or "income." And it will take a year or so after everyone else recovers before government recovers too.

Federal stimulus money significantly helped local school systems last year, and to some extent this year. But it's mostly gone for FY11.

~~signed, government budget analyst

according to the Virginia Lottery web site, 34% of the lottery goes to the school system. Where is this money? My assessment went up this year, how I do not know, but it did. Not sure where they pulled the numbers, but this is a different subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because of high unemployment and underemployment, people are paying less in income tax. I don't know about DC, but counties and states are required to have balanced budgets. So counties are forced, after several years of much lower revenues, to start making cuts that the public starts to see and feel (up until then it's usually done through hiring freezes, salary freezes, and furloughs of existing employees).

Government "recessions" always occur a year or so after the private sector as it starts to realize significantly reduced revenues, or "income." And it will take a year or so after everyone else recovers before government recovers too.

Federal stimulus money significantly helped local school systems last year, and to some extent this year. But it's mostly gone for FY11.

~~signed, government budget analyst

according to the Virginia Lottery web site, 34% of the lottery goes to the school system. Where is this money? My assessment went up this year, how I do not know, but it did. Not sure where they pulled the numbers, but this is a different subject.

I don't know about Virginia, but you should be able to pull the budget information up for whatever County school system you are interested in. It will have a break down by federal money, state money, and local money. I assume lottery money is state money.

But depending on the relative wealth of a particular county, the county government itself will be picking up a large percentage of school costs.