Encourage City Council to Fully Fund Charlottesville Schools and Recommit to Public Education as a City Priority
Community Budget Forum March 20; Share Your Support for Strong School Funding In Person or Via Email
March 17, 2025 — Charlottesville City Council will host a Community Budget Forum and FY26 City Budget Public Hearing this Thursday, March 20, 2025, at 6pm at CitySpace on the Downtown Mall. We encourage Charlottesville residents to speak out in support of increased funding for Charlottesville City Schools (CCS) and to start planning now for doubling down on schools as a priority for City funding and resources moving forward.
Where the budget stands:
This budget continues a commitment to the City Schools by allocating a total funding amount of $79,026,522 which represents an increase of $4.9M over the funding amount provided in FY25. The increase will cover “raising compensation, eight full-time positions and one part-time role. Among the jobs funded are three English as a second language teachers, two reading and math specialists, one family engagement liaison, one transportation coordinator, and a recruitment specialist.”
Through the City’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP), $6M is funded for school capital improvements in FY26, and a total of $55.1M is planned for school projects over the next 5 years including $30M for the Walker School Pre-K Center. CCS had requested $1.5M in additional funding; the current City budget includes $1.4M.
You can see toplines for the budget here.
Read C-ville Weekly coverage of the budget.
Why schools should be prioritized:
With the future of state and federal funding for public education unclear, our local government should be carving a path now to a sustained increase in funding for Charlottesville’s public schools. This uncertainty comes on the heels of recent headlines about math deficiencies in Virginia, literacy rates in the City and ongoing academic and social-emotional challenges post-COVID that underscore the urgency of robust support for city schools.
What shape should that funding take? Charlottesville United took the time last fall to ask just that at a variety of community events and gatherings. We collected feedback at Prospect, Riverside Avenue, Westhaven, South First Street, Madison Ave, Michie Drive, Lugo McGinness and Charlottesville High School.
You can find the full survey results on our website, but the results were clear: Social-Emotional Wellness, Educator Support and School Safety must be prioritized.
We presented these findings to the School Board and CCS administration and we are pleased to see the community’s priorities represented in the CCS budget and preliminary City budget. While there is much room for improvement and we had advocated for a higher budget request of the City, we stand in strong support of the $4.9M additional request by CCS (currently reflected in the City’s budget) that will meet the basic needs of our students.
In addition, it is our recommendation that moving forward City Council should:
Invest more in our schools through the Community Investment Plan (CIP). At a minimum this funding should keep pace with inflation and rising construction costs. We must ensure that prior investments like the Walker-Buford reconfiguration are not left half-done and truly set our schools up for success. Let’s finish the Charlottesville Middle School project strong, move swiftly to the Walker Pre-K campus, and turn our attention to many needs at CHS and other schools.
Be more transparent about the City’s surplus. We often hear “if the City has a surplus every year, why are the schools always begging for money?” Indeed, if there is a surplus, why ask our schools, already scraping by on a needs-based budget, to tap into their reserves?
Learn from the Safety Audit findings to improve accountability. If the City has been billing CCS for maintenance, any necessary safety improvements that fall under that should be the City’s responsibility—not an extra financial burden on CCS.
Acknowledge the social-emotional support piece. The CCS budget presented to City Council reflects enhancements to the social-emotional support staff at our schools. Charlottesville United will continue to push for more focus on how to further enhance this important piece.
If you have children in our City’s public schools, you know the stakes are high. That’s also true for our educators who pour everything into their jobs. For those who don’t have children or whose children are long past school age or for those who choose one of the area’s many private schools, Charlottesville’s public schools are still worthy of our collective investment.
CCS students ARE the future. Their futures are our futures. And with a tenuous future for public education, this is the time for Charlottesville to dig deep and recommit to more robust and sustained funding for our schools.
Please tell Charlottesville City Council that you support their strong, sustained funding for our City Schools. If you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can share your voice directly with City Council via email: council@charlottesville.gov