Don’t let those dollar signs with all those zeros attached fool you, Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
Campbell is superintendent of Monongalia County Schools, and his district just approved an operating budget of $145 million for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
That ledger, however, isn’t entirely in the black, he said.
The district is projected to lose some $1.9 million in state aid dollars due to the 350 local students who have already enrolled in charter schools for fall, he said.
The state allocates around $4,300 per student in that funding formula, and if a student goes out of the county system, those dollars go with him.
According to Campbell’s totals, 250 students from Mon in the above headcount are expected to enroll in the West Virginia Academy Ltd., which is opening its doors this fall in a building once used by WVU on Chestnut Ridge Road.
The other 100 from the county, Campbell said, are going online. They’re split between the West Virginia Virtual Academy and Virtual Preparatory Academy.
West Virginia Academy’s president and board chair John Treu also has a ledger from which he’s working: He’s charting enrollment at the new school at 465, with a total capacity of 549.
Some 80% of those students are from Monongalia households, he said, with another 10% driving over from Preston.
Around 4% of the remaining enrollment is comprised of Marion County students, the charter president said, with the rest either from other counties across West Virginia or from out-of-state families in the process of relocating here.
Classrooms at the Chestnut Ridge facility, he said, are being equipped with the latest learning technologies.
Mon’s schools already have such technology, Treu’s counterpart in the county said, which he attributes to relative economic vibrancy of the region.
Campbell said he appreciates that Mon’s public district fares better that many in the Mountain State.
Voters are traditionally generous at the polls, almost always saying yes to an education levy on the ballot that brings in more than $30 million annually to school coffers.
That allows the district, Campbell said, to outfit its classrooms to schedule unique offerings such as Mandarin language instruction on the elementary level.
But there is a cost-caveat, he said.
That $145 budget million budget, in effect, he said, has already been spent.
In the business of education, he said, money is relative. You have to spend it, he said, to make good on your investment — which is in the form of all the students who fill the classrooms in your district.
“It’s not like it’s an account we’re sitting on,” he said. “Every dime has been allocated.”
Campbell said he and his fellow administrators will spend the summer months tweaking and honing the shortfall.
A loss of enrollment — and the nearly $2 million that goes with it — isn’t easy to absorb, he said, no matter how well-off you may appear.
“We’re gonna have to make some adjustments.”
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