The state says some rural counties are better able to pay for their schools than the most affluent localities

Craig County was home to just 4,892 people in the most recent census and is getting smaller in each subsequent estimate. The third least-populated county in the state, Craig is a beautiful land of mountains and valleys with virtually no industry — 78% of the workers leave the county every day to work.

The state of Virginia also says it’s almost as capable of paying for its own school as Prince William County in Northern Virginia is, with one key difference.

In the state’s funding formula known as the Local Composite Index, Prince William County, the land of more than 40 data centers where payrolls are calculated in the billions, saw its ability to pay for schools drop — while Craig County saw its supposed ability rise.

Under the state’s funding formula, Craig is now expected to spend $400,000 more for its schools, a sum that may seem small elsewhere but one that looms large in Craig. “That is 6 cents alone on the real estate tax,” says Craig County Supervisor Jordan Labiosa.

Craig County is not alone, or even the most extreme example — it’s simply the smallest county to wind up on the wrong end of the formula. In the most recent LCI calculations, nine localities across the state saw a percentage increase of 10% or more in their score. Seven of those are rural counties.

Twelve other localities saw their scores rise between 5% and 9.9.%. Ten of those are clearly rural and an 11th, Albemarle County, is partly rural.

Not all rural counties got hammered by the new LCI calculations. Across much of Southwest and Southside Virginia, plus some rural counties elsewhere, localities saw their LCI scores decline. That should help them with their state funding, and helps explain why rural legislators are often the most reluctant to tinker with the formula since their schools depend the most on state funding.

However, some rural localities — often those with particular characteristics — saw their LCI scores shoot up, with the result being that they’re looking at having to shell out more funding to make up for what’s not coming from the state.

LCI scores, which are based on local estate values, taxable retail sales and school enrollment, have a maximum score of .8000.

In the most recent calculations, Floyd County’s scores rose from .3513 to .4056, an increase of .0543 — or 15.546%. “This equates to a loss of approximately $940,000 in state revenues, which is huge for a $25 million total budget,” said Superintendent Jessica Cromer.

In Shenandoah County, the LCI score rose from .3852 to .4248, an increase of .0396 — or 10.28%. Superintendent Melody Sheppard anticipates this will mean a loss of $1,924,652 in state funding.

In Franklin County, the LCI score rose from .3982 to .4596, an increase of .0614 — or 15.42%. The county is still crunching numbers but earlier said it anticipates a loss of $3.7 million in state funding.

All these are big numbers in rural counties, but the numbers get bigger yet in Richmond, one of the few urban localities that saw its LCI rise dramatically. Richmond’s score went from .5139 to .5740 — an increase of .0601, or 11.69%. “The increase in the LCI in Richmond for this biennium is significant indeed,” said school spokesman Matthew Stanley. It appears, he said, “the burden has shifted from the state to the locality by $11,077,445.”

Since multiple factors go into computing the LCI, multiple factors could be driving the changes in each of these localities. However, when you map the LCI changes, some trends emerge. I mentioned earlier that counties with particular characteristics seemed most likely to have big LCI increases — those are ones that have seen big increases in property values. The biggest jump in LCI scores came in Rockingham County, where the scores shot up 18.21% in just two years. School Superintendent Larry Shiflett says that translates into asking the county supervisors for $6 million more. We don’t have to look far to find out why Rockingham County’s score is going up so much: Property values in the county are up 57.6% in that same time period, according to the Virginia Department of Education.

At some level, this makes perfectly good sense — the county is wealthier, so clearly it has more ability to pay for its own schools. Of course, we know that not all growth is evenly distributed. That’s hard to see in Rockingham, where farmland in all parts of the county are now blooming subdivisions.

We see the uneven growth more clearly in Franklin County, where the explosive growth around Smith Mountain Lake has driven up property values and skewed the LCI scores, even though that growth is only seen in part of the county. The LCI scores are computed every two years. In the past two years, property values in Franklin County are up 39%, according to the Virginia Department of Education. In Floyd County, they’re up 33.8%. No wonder both localities also have the second and third highest percentage increases in LCI scores in the state.

Both counties qualify as something that demographers like to call “rural resorts” — places that have become destinations for people to live. However, as these counties attract more affluent residents, we often see a widening gap between rich and not-so-rich. It’s not the people on Shooting Creek who are driving up Franklin County’s LCI score and costing the county state funding, it’s the ones along the lake. Franklin may have had a big jump in property values, but nearly half its students still live in poverty. We also see this in some of the rural counties along the Chesapeake Bay. The LCI score in Northumberland County is up 10.06%, even though just under 60% of the students live in poverty. We can also see it Nelson County, where the LCI score is up 12.86%, even though 53% of the students live in poverty. Nelson also has the Wintergreen resort and growth from nearby Charlottesville that has driven up property values 27% in the past two years. “Nelson County is kind of a tale of two counties in that much of this increase is due to a specific area in the county that is not very reflective of the rest of Nelson,” according to Superintendent Amanda Hester.

We can see it also in Charles City County east of Richmond. The county is losing population. It’s also relatively poor — nearly 64% of its students officially live in poverty. However, Charles City County has also seen people moving in for riverfront property and relative proximity to Richmond. In the most recent LCI figures, the value of property in the county jumped 24.5% — and that helped drive a 13.96% increase in the LCI score. Charles City is now listed as having a greater ability to pay for its schools than Loudoun County, the most affluent county not just in the state but the whole country. That seems flat-out wrong, yet that’s how the math works out.

In an earlier column, I pointed out how 22 localities in Virginia are now rated as having a better ability to pay than Loudoun County — virtually all rural counties:

Here’s another map, which shows how many localities are deemed as having a better ability to pay than Prince William County. I don’t mean to pick on Prince William, but we are talking about a county where the median household income is $123,193, almost twice what it is in Craig County, which is on the same LCI plane.

And here’s yet another map. Here are all the localities that are deemed better able to pay than Charles City County — median income $65,573, poverty rate 63.8%. You’ll notice that Charles City is rated better able to pay than even most of the most affluent localities in the state.

Something seems amiss here.

First of a two-part series. Next: Some other oddities in the LCI scores.