What Albemarle’s 1% School Sales Tax Referendum Means for Crozet Schools

September 24, 2026
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First, read the story at Charlottesville Community Engagement, which I noticed after I finished my first draft of this post. Darn it.

tl;dr: There’s a referendum on the ballot this year for a 1% increase in the sales tax to fund capital improvements in schools. Learn more below (ideally, before you vote 🙂 )

Years ago, at a Crozet Community Advisory Committee meeting, a man stood up to oppose something having to do with the schools. He didn’t have kids, he said. Why should his taxes pay for schools?

I wasn’t on the CCAC then. I sat in the back, tweeted the meetings and wrote recaps afterward. That night I couldn’t help myself. I stood up and said that one of the benefits of public education is that we all benefit from an educated population — and that when my kids were out of school, I’d still want my taxes paying for it.

My kids are out of school now. I still do.

Some people don’t value educated citizens. They’re wrong.

What’s on the ballot

On November 3, Albemarle voters will answer this question:

Shall the County of Albemarle impose a one percent (1%) sales and use tax to fund capital projects for the construction or renovation of schools, with revenues to be used solely for those purposes, and the tax to expire on June 30, 2046?

A yes vote doesn’t levy the tax. It gives the Board of Supervisors authority to adopt an ordinance, which by law takes effect on the first of a month at least 120 days later. The county expects May 2027. The county’s sales tax rate would go from 5.3% to 6.3%. Groceries, essential hygiene products and prescription medicines are exempt. The county estimates this could raise at least $20 million a year. The money can only go to new school construction, renovation and the debt on those projects. Not salaries. Not maintenance.

This is new. Until this year, only nine localities — Danville and the counties of Charlotte, Gloucester, Halifax, Henry, Mecklenburg, Northampton, Patrick and Pittsylvania — could ask. Governor Youngkin vetoed earlier expansions. The 2026 Appropriation Act (HB 30, Special Session I) extended Va. Code § 58.1-605.1 to nearly every city and county. Supervisors voted unanimously July 15 to put it on our ballot.

We’re not alone. Forty-seven localities vote on it this fall, including Charlottesville (about $12 million a year), Fluvanna, Chesterfield, Richmond and Martinsville. Louisa declined.

The same ballot also carries three proposed amendments to the Virginia Constitution. Read those before you go, too.

Is 1% a lot? Yes. But it’s not a 1% increase in property taxes, and it spreads the cost across everyone who buys something here — including people who only visit Albemarle County. I’m voting yes.

Crozet grew faster than the plan

The Crozet Master Plan, adopted in 2004 and updated in 2010, envisioned 12,000 residents by 2030 and an eventual build-out of 18,000. The Census counted 5,565 in 2010 and 9,224 in 2020 — up 66% in a decade. In 2024, Crozet United estimated we’d passed 12,000, based on 4,864 households with Albemarle County Service Authority water connections.

The county-level forecasts held up better. In 2017, Weldon Cooper projected Albemarle at 118,828 for 2025. Its 2025 estimate: 119,479 — off by about 650 people, roughly half a percent. It now projects 124,560 by 2030.

From 2016 through 2025, the CAAR MLS recorded 3,309 closed sales in the Brownsville and Crozet Elementary districts. 1,254 were new construction. That’s a floor; some builder sales — more so with national builders — never touch the MLS.

More is coming. ACPS’s Long Range Planning Advisory Committee counts 1,520 approved or by-right unbuilt homes in the Henley and Western attendance zones, plus 200 more under review.

The additions worked. Until high school.

Crozet’s growth has been absorbed with additions and trailers. Brownsville got an addition in 2009. Crozet Elementary’s expansion opened in 2022, followed by redistricting. At the elementary level, those plans seem to have worked to provide space and balance. In short – we’re good on Crozet elementary schools.

Elementary enrollment is actually flat to falling. Brownsville and Crozet Elementary together had 1,072 students in 2021-22 and 1,038 this fall, according to ACPS’s 10-year projection file. Brownsville has lost students every year since the 2022 redistricting, from 576 to 486. Over the same stretch, Western went from 1,139 to 1,296.

I’m genuinely curious about slowing birth-rate projections and what that will mean for schools, and for the Crozet real estate market for that matter.

At Western, the additions-and-trailers approach is running out.

ACPS’s October 2025 enrollment and capacity report (capacity excludes trailers):

SchoolCapacity (K-12)Enrolled 2025-26Projected peakOn ACPS priority list?Estimated cost
Crozet Elementary660552589 (2035-36)No—
Brownsville Elementary728486547 (2035-36)No—
Henley Middle946870899 (2035-36)No—
Western Albemarle High1,1071,296 (117%)1,440 (2030-31)Improvements: #4. Addition: 13th or lower~$23M improvements; $12.7M addition

The other two Western-feeder-pattern elementary schools have room too: Ivy (369 of 400) and Murray (256 of 268). Murray’s $16.8 million improvements and additions are on the list. And I can’t think of any projected developments, big or small, that will feed more kids into these schools

The projections have been pretty accurate. In 2017, ACPS projected Western would grow from 1,080 to about 1,300 within ten years. This fall: 1,296. The same forecast had Henley topping 1,000; it’s at 870. Brownsville ran the other way — in 2018 it added 43 more students than projected.

Western has had an eight-classroom trailer since 2021. So has Henley.

What’s on the list for Crozet

The School Board’s capital request has 21 items. One is funded: a new northern elementary school. The other 20 are ranked and total $547 million.

  • #1: new comprehensive high school. $231.6 million plus land, unfunded, targeted to open in 2031-32. It would relieve all three high schools, including Western.
  • #4: Western Albemarle improvements. Moved up from seventh. About $23 million, slated for 2028: corridors, windows, commons, makerspace, performing arts wing, restrooms, an elevator. Mostly renovation, not seats.
  • 13th or lower: Western Albemarle addition. A two-story, 9,200-square-foot addition that yields 8–10 classrooms, $12.7 million. The advisory committee had ranked it 20th of 21.
  • Crozet Elementary, Brownsville and Henley: not on the list.

The math: at least $20 million a year from May 2027 through June 2046 is roughly $380 million — about 70% of the $547 million unfunded list, before inflation and before any bonding against it. The tax doesn’t solve everything. It gets closer than anything else on the table.

Why are we so far behind?

There are plenty of reasons – lack of political will is one. And also – capital spending was cut during the Great Recession and paused again during COVID. But the school division also asked for less than it needed for years, and the county held no school bond referendums between 1974 and 2016.

1. Recession cut and COVID pause: Information Charlottesville, Feb. 23, 2022
County Executive Jeff Richardson said capital spending in 2010 and 2011 was hit by the Great Recession, and 2021 by the pandemic pause. The same article has Supervisor Ann Mallek blaming the current backlog on recession-era cuts to new projects.

2. The school division asked for less than it needed: Charlottesville Tomorrow, 2014
ACPS acknowledged that because capital funding had been limited, it often left facility needs such as modernizations out of its requests.

3. No referendums between 1974 and 2016: Daily Progress, 2021
Before the 2016 referendum, which passed with 73% of the vote, the county’s previous referendum was in 1974, to build Western Albemarle High School. The Daily Progress is paywalled. If you’d rather link a free source, Charlottesville Tomorrow reports the same 1974 and 2016 dates.

Do this
Find your school on the ACPS priority list and in the enrollment table. See where it ranks. Then vote.

How to vote

Disclosure: I used Claude to research a lot of this story, and it wrote some of it as well. Taking piles of information and distilling into digestible bites is a practical use of AI

Sources

Ballot, law, statewide

Schools

Population

Voting

MLS

  • CAAR MLS master file, pulled Sept. 22, 2026. Status = Sold, proposed property types excluded, deduplicated by MLS number, Elem School = Brownsville or Crozet, closed 2016–2025. New construction = MLS flag “Yes.”

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Something to say?

  1. Reply

    No tax increase is necessary. Vote NO! There is a tremendous amount of unnecessary overhead in these schools. Start by sharpening your pencils and do hard and necessary cuts. The focus should be on students not administrators.

    1. Reply

      Specifically where/what would you cut? I don’t have the answers either.

      This referendum is not for salaries, etc.

      “By law, the revenue can be used only for school construction, renovation and related debt payments. The increased revenue cannot be used for salaries, maintenance or daily operational costs. Those must be covered through existing revenue streams. The 1-cent sales tax increase would automatically expire June 30, 2046, unless voters renew it in a future referendum.”

      https://www.k12albemarle.org/our-departments/communications/news-board/~board/newsroom/post/albemarle-voters-to-weigh-1-cent-sales-tax-for-school-construction-this-fall