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VOLUME 27
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School Supporters Dominate County Budget Hearings
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jhunley@leesburgtoday.com
oudoun public school supporters made an emphatic statement last week to county supervisors: They want to see education needs funded in the locality’s budget for the next fiscal year. Some even testified during two public hearings that they’re OK with supervisors raising the real estate tax rate to accomplish this goal. But are the supervisors listening? Perhaps. Three of them said Monday night said they are leaning toward supporting a real estate tax rate that could give the School Board the amount of local funding they seek—or, at least, almost that much. That, however, would mean an increase in most homeowners’ tax bills. In a work session on the budget for the fiscal year that begins
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Leesburg Today/Danielle Nadler
Kai Zisko stands with his mother during the Board of Supervisors’ budget public hearing Saturday. He was one of more than 75 speakers, most of whom asked for more funding for the schools. Comments from a few supervisors indicate their pleas were heard.
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If one of the big-ticket projects has to wait, it should be the $58.5 million MS-7, he said. Attendance zone boundaries could be temporarily adjusted to send students who live north of Rt. 50 to the already-funded Dulles North middle school (MS-9), which opens in fall of 2017, until MS-7 opens in the fall of 2019 or later. That would likely mean the use of classroom trailers at MS-9 and Stone Hill middle school, and would require those two middle schools, and Mercer middle school, to operate 110-120 percent over their building capacities. Building the elementary school as soon as Continued on Page 26
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In a unanimous vote of board members present, the School Board asked supervisors to make the Academies of Loudoun the top priority, then the Dulles North elementary school (ES-31), followed by the Dulles South middle school (MS-7) and, finally, the $44.5 million conversation of the current C.S. Monroe Technology Center into the county’s alternative school, which is now housed at Douglass School in Leesburg. The conversion will take place after the technology center moves to the Academies of Loudoun campus. The adopted priority list follows the recommendation of Executive Director of Planning Sam Adamo.
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he Academies of Loudoun has to come first.” The words of School Board member Jennifer Bergel (Catoctin) captured the sentiment of the majority of Loudoun’s nine-member School Board when it was asked to set priorities for the district’s building needs. The request comes as county and school leaders work through a financial puzzle, for which they hold too many large pieces to fit. Both the county
and the school system have more capital funding requests to fund schools, parks and roads over the next six years than the county’s voluntary annual debt limit allows. County Administrator Tim Hemstreet, on behalf of the Board of Supervisors, asked school leaders at a meeting Feb. 24 to figure out which projects can wait. “We believe there should be a combination of school and county projects delayed in order to accelerate ES-31 and MS-7,” Hemstreet said, referring to the two school projects that the School Board wants to fast track to accommodate a swell of enrollment in the Dulles area.
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Academies Project Remains Top Construction Priority
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