By Jonathan Mummolo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Loudoun Supervisor Susan Klimek Buckley understood how parents felt at a recent meeting, imploring county officials to fund the school board's full budget request.
She got her start in county politics by doing the same thing.
"My whole citizen activism started with going to a public hearing in March of 2004 where I spoke in support of full funding of the school operating budget," she said, recalling her three-minute address to a packed board room that earned her a modest ovation.
The meeting was the beginning of years of involvement with a host of civic organizations, through which she advocated for slower growth and more money for public schools.
As an elected official, however, Buckley (D-Sugarland Run) must weigh the needs of her constituents, from those willing to pay higher taxes in exchange for better schools to those on the brink of losing homes to foreclosure and barely making ends meet.
And in a twist of political irony, Buckley, now empowered to vote on the school budget, is facing an economic scenario that makes fully funding the school system's request next to impossible to justify, she said.
"It's very frustrating," said Buckley, 43, the board's vice chairman. "I've come to the realization that the schools can't serve everybody. . . . There are a large number of parents here in Loudoun County that can afford a tax increase. Then you have a large number of people who can't afford it. I get many, many, many e-mails from Loudoun County residents saying, 'I am really suffering economically. Don't raise taxes.' . . . As a supervisor, I can't just represent my interests."
Buckley's experience on both sides of the budget process illustrates a clash that is likely to persist, and may worsen, across the region: Parents and school officials want better schools and demand more money each year to meet growing needs; local governments have severely limited resources.
Loudoun is facing its most challenging budget in more than a decade. The county's population has more than tripled since 1990 and more than 3,000 new students are expected for the coming school year. By 2013, enrollment in a system that now has 54,000 students is expected to climb to more than 76,000.
At the same time, county funding, the bulk of which comes from property taxes, is tight because of plummeting residential property values. Last month, County Administrator Kirby M. Bowers proposed a school operating budget that is $22.6 million less than the system requested, though still 12 percent more than last year.
Bowers's proposal would require an increase of $640 in the average homeowner's tax bill, and the board has been discussing allocating even less for schools.
The debate over taxes and school funding is one Buckley has been closely engaged in for many years. After the 2004 meeting, she began to organize local support to fight what she described as the previous board's harmful policy of approving residential developments that attracted new residents, and then failing to adequately fund the school system's increased needs that resulted.
She founded the Eastern Loudoun Schools Association, Concerned Citizens of Sugarland Run and joined the PTO of her sons' school, Lowes Island Elementary, serving as vice president for two years. Last year, she and a slate of Democrats ousted the county board's Republican majority with campaigns that decried rampant growth and trumpeted the importance of public education.
Buckley said there is room in the schools budget for trimming, and that advocates of full funding "may very well may be disappointed." She said that after hearing from a variety of constituents and being privy to the inner workings of the budget process she sees "flexibility" in such areas as teacher salaries and administrative staffing.
"I do think that there are areas [for] improvement in the school budget -- things that can be changed, trimmed," Buckley said.
She also said that the annual clash over school funding stems from a "broken" budget process that she first saw as a parent and hopes to ameliorate as a supervisor.
In past years, she said, the school board and supervisors would, "bang their heads against each other during the budget month of March and then kind of walk away." This year, she said, the two boards still tend to "talk past each other," but there are positive signs. The two boards formed a committee that has met three times this year, and will do so after the budget is completed next month, she said.
"This will be a year-long process," she said.
Still, some residents who expected the school system to fare more favorably under the new board are concerned about the direction the budget work sessions are taking.
"I had hoped that with a new Democratic board that we would see an emphasis on fulfilling the needs of education," said Ashburn resident Fay Lyle, who has a daughter in fifth grade. "A lot of people moved to this county because they expect a great public education."
Others said they were reserving judgment.
"They're trying to establish themselves as a board," said Sterling parent Carol Turpin, who serves on the Horizon Elementary School PTA. She said taxes should be raised to meet the school board's request. "I don't want to nail them to the board yet. Notice I say 'yet.' "
Buckley said her budget vote will depend on the funds available after agreement on a reasonable tax rate. And of concerned parents, she asked that they judge her after her term ends, not by this single and, by all accounts, tumultuous budget year.
"I struggle with the decision and I really do not want to harm the schools, but we really need to go down a different road," she said. "In some ways it would be easy to just advocate full funding because a lot of people view the Democrats as saying that and advocating for that, and it would be easy to reach out to that group of people and do what they want and then walk away. . . But I don't think we would be doing our duty."
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