The Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS) division has unveiled its spending request for the 2025-26 school year, the second in a row in which expenditures surpass projected revenues, this year with a $5 million shortfall. Total requested spending is $289 million, a 7% jump over last year. Based on a projected enrollment of 13,802 students (an increase of 45 students) next year, the ACPS budget results in an annual cost per pupil of $21,000, over $1,000 per student more than the current year. Albemarle ranks in the top 20 of Virginia’s 132 districts in spending per pupil.

The School Board has a tight budget timetable and will conduct only one public hearing and two work sessions during the three-week span from the day the funding request was first presented to the board on February 20 to its scheduled approval on March 13. The February 27 School Board meeting was the sole opportunity for the public to weigh in on the board’s funding priorities in person ahead of the March deadline. The funding request then moves to the Board of Supervisors on March 17.

This year’s schools budget expects to receive $209 million from local government sources—$10 million more than last year (a 5% increase) due to higher real estate assessments and property taxes on citizens. The state will contribute $71 million, and federal sources will add $.5 million. ACPS Director of Budget and Planning Maya Kumazawa did not address how the division might make up the $5 million deficit during the February budget work session.

The state provides its share of funding based on a Local Composite Index (LCI)—which estimates a county’s “ability to pay” for education costs—along with student enrollment numbers. The LCI is calculated based on three indicators within each county: real property values, adjusted gross income, and taxable retail sales. School divisions with a higher index are considered to have more wealth and thus receive less state funding and vice versa, and Albemarle’s index has risen in recent years due to rising property values and higher-income remote workers moving to the county.

Public comment

Much of the public commentary ahead of the budget work session focused on proposed service cuts, which will discontinue programs such as the National Defense Cadet Corps at Monticello High School, Student Safety Coaches in high schools, and the Foreign Language in Elementary School (FLES) program. Eighteen members of the public signed up to comment during the meeting, many asking the board not to cut the FLES program in which content learning is reinforced in a different language (French or Spanish), beginning with K-1 students. The program is currently offered only at Ivy, Murray, Crozet, and Broadus Wood Elementary schools, all of which are in the White Hall District.

Kate Gerry, a third grade teacher at Broadus Wood who has in the past been named teacher of the year and equity educator of the year, urged the board to reconsider eliminating FLES. “The program brings us closer as a school community and better academically,” she said. “Through FLES, the world has become bigger, the school has become more joyful, and our students have noticed. This is what school should feel like for our kids, and watching this happen is why we became educators. Broadus Wood received the Virginia Board of Education’s highest achievement award last year, and we believe FLES was directly responsible for part of that.”

Mark Sicoli, a professor of linguistics at UVA with two children in White Hall schools, said that linguistic research demonstrates the best time in life to learn languages is as a child because of the critical language acquisition period before puberty. “Adolescents and adults have a far more difficult time and often fail to reach fluency,” he said. “It’s no consolation to tell us that students will still have second languages in middle and high school, because cutting FLES removes the gains that would help them succeed there.”

Five Broadus Wood students approached the microphone and described why FLES is important to their school, citing both learning and community. “In second grade, we had someone who transferred here from Mexico, and if Spanish was not here [in FLES], we would not have been able to have conversations with her like we do now,” said one student. They then held a mock conversation in Spanish and sang a short Spanish song.

Board member Allison Spillman asked about the cost per student of the program and how many students in total are affected. (One parent speaker estimated that 1,400 kids receive FLES instruction.) “I think it’s important to look at the correlation between [FLES participation] and test scores in all of those schools that are using it because I think that there could be a strong correlation,” said Spillman. “When you look at the budget, the spending per student at all of these schools does fall at the very bottom.”

Superintendent Matt Haas said that during last year’s “budget crunch,” schools were offered a waiver for their FLES programs to use the funding for other staffing. “All the other schools abandoned the program because they wanted to use other positions to contribute to their core programs in a more direct way,” he said. “We haven’t tracked anything with it—it’s what we call a legacy program.”

Board member Judy Le said she asked division staff how much it would cost to expand the program to all elementary schools, in keeping with the division’s equity lens for considering programming. “I was told it would cost $1.8 million on top of the $700,000 currently being cut from the budget,” she said, “so it would be $2.5 million in total for it to be equitably spread.”

In other public comment, four people addressed the proposal to reintroduce School Resource (law enforcement) Officers into high schools, with two speaking in favor and two against.

By the Numbers

Major changes to existing school fund expenditures for 2025-26 include $3.5 million in health care cost increases for employees; $1 million in operating cost adjustments to maintain services such as Bright Stars, technology replacements, and license agreements; $2.3 million for new substitute teachers, bus drivers, and special education and English learner staffing; $1.5 million for inflation; and $6 million for employee health care plan rate increases, a jump of 24%. This last item will be offset by a contribution from Albemarle County, which will replenish the insurance reserve that has been depleted due to high-cost claims and the increased cost of medical services.

New or expanded proposals for the coming year include a 3% salary increase plus benefits, and a 4.5% increase for special education teacher assistant and transportation assistant positions. Bellwether instructional priorities implementation will cost $500,000 for curricular tools, textbooks, licenses for intervention programs, and tracking and monitoring tools, plus an additional $150,000 the following year for additional textbook adoptions.

The newly launched Scholars Studios program will require $400,000 for lead and support teachers and operational funding, which will recur going forward. The plan also specifies an additional five teacher/assistant positions and an additional $200,000 in funding beginning in year 2 of the program and recurring going forward.

ACPS proposes to allocate $650,000 to take over the operation of the Intensive Support Center for division students with emotional disabilities—formerly Ivy Creek through the Piedmont Regional Education Program (PREP)—and expand the Post High program. The new arrangement will reallocate savings to hire 15 ACPS staff to serve ACPS students, and will provide additional space for the Post High program and centralized office space for special education staff.

Two new School Resource Officers (SROs) will be assigned to Monticello and Western Albemarle High Schools to “enhance school safety by providing a dedicated law enforcement presence in and around the schools,” according to budget documents. ACPS said the SROs “protect students, staff, and property, foster positive relationships between law enforcement and the community, and assist in crisis management, conflict resolution, and education on legal issues.”

The school division’s five-year capital improvement program (separate from the operating budget) is about $190 million, covering programs such as facilities maintenance, network infrastructure, and school bus replacement, and projects such as new school buildings.

The next School Board meeting with a public comment period will be their March 13 meeting, during which the board is expected to approve the funding request, and it will then be presented to the county Board of Supervisors on March 17.