Governor signs school funding bill

Governor Kaine last week signed into law one of the two school funding bills that could bring more state funds to Rappahannock schools.

The House bill, H.B. 936, sponsored by Rappahannock delegate Todd Gilbert, will make Rappahannock eligible to pursue additional state education funding through a cost-sharing agreement with an adjacent county.

Governor Kaine has not yet signed the identical Senate bill sponsored by Rappahannock senator Mark Obenshain.

If Rappahannock enters into a cost-sharing agreement, the schools could receive up to about $250,000 annually beginning in July of 2010.

The General Assembly would have to approve any additional state money that the schools might receive.

Rappahannock Superintendent Dr. Robert Chappell said the additional money would help.

"I know that people have characterized $250,000 as a drop in a bucket, but it sounds like a lot of money to me," he said.

School and county officials had hoped to receive about $1.5 million from the bill, but to make it more viable in a tight-fisted fiscal year, Del. Gilbert reduced the amount that it could bring Rappahannock.

$250,000 would be less than two percent of an education budget that Rappahannock County Administrator John McCarthy said could rise to $14 million in fiscal year 2011, the first year the additional state money would be available.

Chappell said the funding bill succeeded because of the work of supportive members of the General Assembly, county and school officials, and Rappahannock residents, who wrote more than 500 letters to assembly members.

He said that in January he was not sure if the bill would make it, but then momentum started to build.

"It was just a team effort, he said. "Everybody played a role."

Chappell said he has already had in-person meetings with two adjacent counties to discuss cost-sharing agreements. He did not say which counties he had spoken to.