Schools start population count; Need even those not in public schools

 

 

School administrators want your child, even if he/she doesn’t attend a public school, to be counted. Halifax County Public Schools are embarking on the triennial school census, which seeks to number children between the ages 5 and 19 for the purpose of seeking Virginia sales tax money. Every public division gets a cut of the one and one-quarter percent of the state’s sales tax based on its percentage of Virginia’s total school-age population. With other localities’ populations booming, it’s all the more vital to the budget that every local kid gets counted. The school census figures (and funding) differ from the Average Daily Membership money in that ADM money from Richmond is based on actual enrollment. Deputy Superintendent Larry Clark stressed to School Board members,

“We’re not trying to impose and we’re not trying to intrude” on families whose children are educated elsewhere, whether they’re homeschooled, in private school, or attend outside the county, but that he needs an accurate head count. Families who choose other means of education will not be urged to attend public school, he emphasized. “That is not our purpose.” “It makes us – and this is the bottom line – … less dependent on local funding if we’re getting our fair share from Richmond. And our fair share is going to be based on the accuracy of this census,” Clark said. Clark said census-takers once went door to door to count children, but that the practice has stopped. Now, students are polled in the schools, and homeschoolers and nearby private schools are contacted. Kathy Reagan and Phyllis Jackson are supervising the project, which is mandated by the state. Also in the works is a census of small children age birth-five for future enrollment projections.