Some high-poverty counties are told they can better pay for their own schools than the richest county in the country

Nearly one-third of the localities that are rated the best able to pay for their own schools also have more than 50% of their students living in poverty.

That’s a fact, based on data from the Virginia Department of Education.

Now here’s an opinion: That doesn’t seem right.

The culprit here is the Local Composite Index, the funding formula that determines a locality’s ability (or inability) to pay for its own schools — and therefore determines how much the state will pay to make up the difference.

Bath County, Lancaster County and Surry County are among 10 localities all scored at .8000 — the highest score possible, meaning they are more able to pay for their schools than anybody else.

All three also have more than 50% of their students living in poverty. In Bath, the figure is 53.73%. In Surry County, the figure is 58.87%. In Lancaster County, the poverty figure is higher yet — 68.30%.

What accounts for this disconnect? Several things.

First, the LCI doesn’t take poverty into account at all — it measures local property values, local taxable retail sales and enrollment.

Second, Bath, Lancaster and Surry all have unique circumstances driving their high LCI scores. Bath County is home to the Omni Homestead Resort, which skews local property values. Surry County is home to a nuclear power plant. Lancaster County doesn’t have a single driver like those two counties do, but has become a magnet for affluent retirees — the Internal Revenue Service says the average income of those moving into Lancaster is $186,200. That influx has the effect of driving up the value of waterfront property regardless of the poverty rate elsewhere in the county.

There are often exceptions to everything; no funding formula can ever account for every situation, but the disconnect between poverty rates and a county’s score on its official ability to pay for schools seems a mighty big omission. We see other localities with high poverty rates that the LCI mistakes for affluent counties. Franklin County has 47.29% of its students living in poverty but, thanks to the growth around Smith Mountain Lake, the LCI says it’s better able to pay for its schools than Prince William County. The median household income in Franklin County is $66,275 while in Prince William it’s $123,193.

It’s easy for those of us out here in the rural, western part of the state to look upon Northern Virginia and complain, but Prince William County might have reason to have its own objections to the LCI formula. Despite that six-figure median household income, Prince William still has 32.69% of its students living in poverty.

Virginia has 11 localities where more than 70% of its students live in poverty. Of those 11, three are even higher than the 70% range: Brunswick County is at 83.42%, Sussex County is at 92.29%, Franklin city is at 94.75%. You’d think those places might have the three lowest LCI scores, meaning they are rated the least able to pay for their schools and therefore would get a bigger share of state funding. You’d be wrong.

To be sure, none of them rank particularly high, but they’re definitely not at the bottom, either.

Brunswick County, where the median household income is $52,678, is rated better able to pay for its schools than Virginia Beach, where the median household income is $87,544 and the poverty rate is less than half of Brunswick’s at 32.62%. (Brunswick’s LCI is .4379; Virginia Beach’s is .4138.)

Sussex County, where the median household income is $59,195, is rated better able to pay than Stafford County, where the median household income is $128,036 and the poverty rate is almost one third of Sussex’s at 31.42%. (Sussex’s LCI is .3434; Stafford’s is .3312.)

Franklin city, where the median household income is $57,527, is rated better able to pay than Manassas Park, where the median household income is $75,149 and the poverty rate is almost half that of Franklin city at 48.81%. (Franklin city’s LCI is .2884; Manassas Park’s is .2716.)

I pointed out in a previous column that the LCI is so out-of-touch with reality that it ranks 22 localities better able to pay than the richest county in America, Loudoun County.

Loudoun has a poverty rate of just 16.73%. The student poverty rate of those 22 other, less affluent, localities ranges from 24.72% in Clarke County to 58.87% in Surry County to 59.77% in Northumberland County to 65.34% in Westmoreland County to 68.30% in Lancaster County to 70.68% in Richmond. (You’ll notice a lot of counties along the Chesapeake Bay making this list; that’s because they’re part of what demographers call a “rural resort” trend .)

The LCI is not completely wrong, just often wrong. The LCI says the locality least able to pay for its own schools is Radford, with a score of .1658. I do wonder how much that low score is driven by the presence of so many Radford University students. However, ranked just above Radford is Lee County at .1712, and I certainly won’t dispute that Lee County, with a median household income of $41,619 and a student poverty rate of 72.92% could use all the state aid it can get.

Ranked just above them are Buena Vista (.1803), Hopewell (.1870) and Scott County (.1872). I’m not going to quibble with specific placement, just the ones that seem wildly out of whack.

Rural legislators have often been reluctant to tinker with the LCI because their localities tend to benefit the most — and that’s still very much true for some rural localities, maybe even most localities. However, as we’ve just seen, some rural localities wind up getting the shaft.

Generally speaking, as you can see from the map at the top of this column, the localities with the highest student poverty rates are overwhelmingly rural ones, with some central cities thrown in. A formula that took student poverty into account would seem to better align state funding with actual need. Otherwise, we run the risk of some fancy waterfront homes forcing certain rural localities to dig deeper than they can really afford.

The poverty rates of the localities rated most able to pay for their own schools

1. Lancaster County 68.30%
2. Surry County 58.87%
3. Bath County 53.73%
4. Alexandria 40.86%
5. Rappahannock County 37.10%
6. Highland County 31.68%
7. Goochland County 28.75%
8. Arlington County: 23.45%
9. Falls Church 6.96%
10. Fairfax city n/a

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