Pittsylvania County’s school-project finances show completed Gretna security work

Public financial records show completed security-upgrade projects at both Gretna Elementary and Gretna Middle in Gretna, a town in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. The county reports $402,256.68 in combined expenditures for the two schools within a completed countywide security-upgrade project totaling $6,084,595.62.

What the county says it spent in Gretna

Pittsylvania County’s Schools Sales Tax dashboard, reporting figures as of June 2026, lists $189,297.26 in expenditures for Gretna Elementary and $212,959.42 for Gretna Middle. The two amounts add to $402,256.68.

The dashboard lists both schools under a completed countywide security-upgrade project. Its heading contains a spelling error—“Sercuity Upgrades”—but the underlying category is the county’s security-upgrades project. The record does not describe the work as newly approved or currently under construction.

Gretna Elementary and Gretna Middle are separate Pittsylvania County Schools facilities. The available dashboard does not provide a detailed project scope, contractor name, payment schedule or project-by-project invoices for either school.

How the work fits the school-sales-tax program

Pittsylvania County voters approved a 1% school sales tax in November 2022. Collections began July 1, 2023, and the county says the revenue may be used only for new school capital infrastructure. The county identifies enhanced security, including entrance vestibules, as an eligible use.

As of June 2026, the county dashboard reports $11,564,643.54 in school-sales-tax revenue collected since inception. It also reports $17,891,419.39 in Virginia Department of Education funding utilized to date, for $29,456,062.93 in total funding from all sources. Total expenditures since inception are listed at $24,561,515.01.

That structure makes the 1% sales tax a dedicated capital-infrastructure revenue source rather than a general school operating fund. The county says the tax is scheduled to remain in place until February 15, 2042; the school division’s separate referendum page gives a different end date, June 30, 2042. Neither discrepancy changes the June 2026 expenditure figures reported for the Gretna projects.

What “security upgrades” mean in practice

Pittsylvania County Schools describes a divisionwide safety system in which exterior doors are locked and visitors use a video intercom at the front entrance before staff grant access. The division also describes security vestibules, electronic key-card access for certain doors, visitor identification and tracking, and digital video cameras.

The school division says Virginia Department of Education grant funds helped install electronic door locks with video intercom connections and approximately 345 digital video cameras. It also says visitors must complete a front-office check-in process and that key cards can be issued to staff and local law enforcement and deactivated if lost.

Those descriptions apply to the broader school-safety system. The cited records do not establish that every feature described on the safety page was paid for through the two named Gretna capital projects.

Independent state record

A Virginia Department of Education annual cost report independently lists security-upgrade projects at Gretna Elementary and Gretna Middle in Pittsylvania County as projects under contract. The report lists total construction costs of $214,689 for Gretna Elementary and $296,887 for Gretna Middle.

Those are VDOE-reported construction-cost figures, not the same accounting measure as the county dashboard’s expenditures of $189,297.26 and $212,959.42. The difference means the figures should not be combined or presented as interchangeable.

Pittsylvania County Schools’ 1% sales-tax project page identifies the Gretna work as safety-vestibule projects. Its project table contains planned-cost figures that also differ from both the county dashboard and the VDOE report, so those figures are not used here as final expenditures.

Connection to the current county budget

Pittsylvania County’s FY 2027 adopted budget, dated May 8, 2026, provides $27,659,579 in local funding for Pittsylvania County Schools. The budget summary also says county funding continues support for school resource officers in all Pittsylvania County Schools.

The budget provides current context for local school and public-safety support, but it does not itemize the completed Gretna security projects. The available records therefore do not establish that the FY 2027 local school appropriation directly financed the completed work.

For Gretna residents, the records establish two completed school security projects with $402,256.68 in county-reported expenditures, within a countywide program costing $6,084,595.62. They also show the projects’ connection to a dedicated school-capital funding structure while leaving detailed contract scope and payment documentation outside the cited public dashboard.

Sources

• Schools Sales Tax | Pittsylvania County, Virginia
• Virginia Department of Education Annual Cost Data Report
• School Safety | Pittsylvania County Schools

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