Capital Planning for Public School Systems.(in Fauquier County, Virginia)(Statistical Data Included)

Fauquier County is located approximately 40 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., in Virginia's "Hunt Country." Despite policies to manage and control growth, the county grew 13 percent during the last decade to a population of more than 55,000. Although this kind of growth is modest compared to neighboring counties, it is significant in that the county's school population grew almost twice as fast as the total population.

In Virginia, school divisions are coterminous with cities and counties, making them fiscally dependent on the general government even though they are legally separate entities. In Fauquier County, where education accounts for 70 percent of the county's operating budget and nearly 80 percent of the capital budget, the administrative departments of the county and the school division are unified. As such, Finance and General Services staff share responsibility for the preparation of a single capital improvement program (CIP) representing the capital needs of both the county and the school division, which is comprised of two high schools, four middle schools, and 10 elementary schools.

In light of the rapid growth of the county's school population, officials recognized that careful planning would be required to ensure adequate educational facilities for the area's youth. This article outlines the process used by Fauquier County Public Schools to formulate a school construction plan based on projected enrollment levels.

The Planning Process

For many years, the county has prepared a five-year capital improvements program. Not only is this practice industry standard, but it is also a statutory requirement under the Virginia State Code. School officials, however, found the five-year time frame to be too short when it came to planning educational facilities. With the advice of staff, the School Board Building Committee determined that a 10-year planning document would better serve the needs of the school system by facilitating the orderly acquisition of property and the smoothing of attendance zones. The first five years of the document would be incorporated into the county's official capital improvement program.

The first element in the plan was to develop estimates of student population growth. In developing the annual budget, staff had historically relied on Average Daily Membership (ADM), a common measure of aggregate school enrollment. Although ADM was adequate for the purpose of projecting operating expenditures, more differentiated figures were needed for the purpose of planning major capital expenditures.

The assistant superintendent was tasked with analyzing ADM for the previous five years to isolate growth at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The results were surprising. For many years, budget staff had planned operating expenditures based on the assumption of an across-the-board annual growth rate of 2 percent. However, the actual growth rate of the elementary schools proved to be less than 1 percent, while the growth rates of the middle and high schools were respectively 2.5 percent and 2.8 percent. These results proved consistent from year to year and for the entire five-year period.