Superintendent Gurley presents budget request to City Council

The Charlottesville City Council sat down with the Charlottesville School Board on February 10 for a presentation on the latter’s proposed budget for FY26.

“A large portion, the largest portion, I should say, of our revenue source comes from city appropriation followed by state, followed by state revenue,” said Superintendent Royal Gurley at the beginning of the meeting.

The school system’s total proposed budget for FY26 is $124,916,920, a 5.13 percent increase over the current year. (review Gurley’s presentation)

The appropriation from Charlottesville to the school system makes up 62.4 percent of their budget for the current fiscal year with the state making up 21.2 percent followed by 6.8 percent from the federal government.

“The majority of our expenditures, like many organizations, falls within our salary and benefits,” Gurley said. “Salary and benefits make up about 74 percent of our total expenditures.”

Of that amount, 70 percent are in instructional roles, 19 percent are in support roles like custodians and food workers. Eleven percent are in administration.

As with city government, the school system is moving to a system where some employees are represented through collective bargaining. Gurley said this will include salary increases which will increase personnel costs by around $3.575 million. Many of the costs are related to changes to pay scales, but the overall effect would be a 5.5 percent salary increase for those under the agreement.

Gurley said the school system is seeking three additional positions to meet demand for instructors who can teach English as a second language. That’s at a cost of $284,646. There’s also an additional 8.5 positions requested to support efforts to improve on Standards of Quality scores. That would come at a cost of just under $1.26 million.

The school system’s total request of the city government for FY26 is an additional $4.93 million.

The city currently provides $1.25 million a year in capital improvement program funds for school maintenance projects. Gurley is requesting that be increased to at least $1.5 million a year to take construction inflation into consideration.

After Gurley’s presentation, City Manager Sam Sanders had one of his own about some structural issues related to the budget. He said that in each of the last three years, the school system did not use all of the money they were allocated for pupil transportation and school maintenance for a total of $908,000.76 from FY22 to FY24. Sanders called for new agreements between the city and school system to govern the four areas of capital construction, pupil transport, daily maintenance of spaces, and grounds management. (view the presentation)

“Today we have two agreements, not four agreements,” Sanders said. “That is also something that I point out as there’s an issue in my mind there because we’re not necessarily capturing what is the responsibilities that we each are owning.”

Sanders said new agreements would provide more budgetary certainty each year. For instance the Parks and Recreation Department currently provides ground maintenance as city schools, but that’s not captured anywhere.

Sanders also said there need to be conversations about what the next generation of school buildings will look like.

“Do we knock something down and replace it?” Sanders asked. “These are very, very tough conversations. I’ve been in other communities where it’s hard to talk about tearing down 100 year old building, but if that 100-year-old building is not working for what it needs to be today, then it’s a conversation we need to have.”

For that conversation to occur, Sanders said there also needs to be a fresh discussion about how the city funds capital needs for the schools. He said there needs to be a formal document instead of relying on what appears to be an unwritten policy. These conversations will likely occur after this budget cycle.

The School Board will hold a special meeting on February 20 to adopt Superintendent Gurley’s proposed budget. Gurley will formally present the school’s budget at City Council’s regular meeting on March 4.

Before you go: This post and all of the others are intended to increase awareness about the role local government plays in American democracy, especially in and around Charlottesville. This was originally sent out in the February 17, 2025 edition of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter. If you would like to support the work, you can buy a paid subscription or support through Patreon.