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A strong case can be made for Virginia spending more on K-12 education. According to a report issued last week by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the state is significantly short-changing its public schools.
“Virginia school divisions receive less K–12 funding per student than the 50-state average, the regional average, and three of Virginia’s five bordering states,” states the JLARC report. “School divisions in other states receive 14 percent more per student than school divisions in Virginia, on average, after normalizing for differences in cost of labor among states. This equates to about $1,900 more per student than Virginia.”
The report indicates that the Standards of Quality the state uses to determine funding underestimates staffing levels and compensation for teachers that are needed to provide quality educational services. Local divisions are having to make up the shortfall.
Formulas the state uses to determine the needs for individual school divisions are woefully outdated. The SOQs fail to take into account economies of scale for divisions with lower enrollments such as those in our rural area that have higher costs per student than divisions with higher enrollments. Funding for special education is not keeping up with the growing number of students in need of these services.
The JLARC study was undertaken at the direction of the General Assembly after legislators adopted a resolution to this effect during the 2021 session. The study can be found at https://jlarc.virginia.gov/pdfs/reports/ Rpt575.pdf.
After identifying the problems with the methodologies used to determine state funding for local school divisions, the report offers both short-term and long-term solutions to correct these deficiencies. “These recommendations and policy options would improve the state’s education funding formula and better ensure a quality education for Virginia students. Much of the additional funding allocated under this report’s recommendations and options would go toward employee compensation, hiring additional staff as needed to address critical student needs (e.g., reduce longstanding achievement gaps), or providing support services to higher needs students. The return over time on this additional spending would likely be evident through a higher quality teacher workforce and students who are better prepared to succeed. These outcomes are expressly set forth as goals in the Code of Virginia for the state’s public K–12 system.”
We suggest that the General Assembly take the JLARC study’s recommendations and direct the Virginia Department of Education to implement them so that revised SOQs accurately reflect what local divisions truly need. This will take time – we’re not suggesting that the funding gap can be made up all at once.
We do believe that the report provides ample evidence of the need for boosting funding for education with a portion of surplus funds currently available in the state budget. It is our hope that the governor calls a special session of the General Assembly soon so legislators can complete their work on the budget.
