My name is Brian Wheeler. I am the parent of two children at Murray Elementary in Ivy where I serve as PTO President. I also am a taxpayer, voter, and Chief Information Officer at SNL Financial in downtown Charlottesville.

During last year's school budget hearings I suggested a new bumper sticker. Today I have even more reasons to want everyone here to have one. My bumper sticker would read: MY CHILD NEEDS GILMORE'S CAR TAX!

I have a few suggestions regarding the state's funding of education. First, the existing Standards of Quality (SOQ) are inadequate and even these poor standards are not fully funded by the state. Let me give you a few examples from last year's Albemarle County School budget.

Take our 4th and 5th grades last year. Median class size of about 20. SOQs require student-teacher ratio of 25:1. Albemarle pays the difference, that's $1 million for 26 teachers not covered by the state.

Take our principals at middle schools. We have assistant principals at all 5 middle schools. The SOQs only fund them for schools with 600 or more children. Albemarle pays the difference.

The SOQs don't require elementary art, music, and PE teachers. We had almost 50 elementary teachers in those areas last year. Again Albemarle pays the difference.

Just a few examples of inadequate state standards, standards the JLARC report says you fail to support to the tune of $1 billion in each budget. Consider the cumulative impact of this massive education debt.

How will you close this gap? Remember my bumper sticker? We need to raise revenues. Reinstate the car tax. Raise the tobacco tax. At 2.5 cents a pack we are rock bottom 50th in the nation. Virginia is one of the lowest taxed states in the nation--43rd in the nation among general fund spending vs. personal income.

We can't expect the best schools if we aren't willing to pay for them. Our teacher salaries are $3,000 below the national average. We are falling behind our region and the nation.

We ask more and more of our teachers. We have to pay them a competitive salary to recruit and retain them.

So improve the SOQs, fund them fully, and raise our taxes to pay for excellent schools.

*Legislative Forum held by Mitch Van Yahres, Creigh Deeds, and Rob Bell. January 2, 2003, at Charlottesville High School.