2022 VEA Legislative Agenda

VEA Will Initiate Legislation To:

• Fully implement and fund the revised Standards of Quality as prescribed by the Virginia Board of Education.
• Reduce Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments to the minimum federal requirements.
• Ensure public school employees are paid during the dismissal process.
• Provide equality in professional dignity protections for education support professionals.
• Permit advertising on school buses to help hire bus drivers to address our shortage.
• Establish a Virginia State Labor Relations Board to administer and enforce Virginia’s collective bargaining law, including planning and overseeing representation elections and processing cases and complaints.
• Safeguard and strengthen public school employees’ rights to organize and to determine whether to have a bargaining representative.

VEA Supports Legislation That:

• Provides funding to ensure teacher salaries are at or above the national average and that school employees earn a livable wage.
• Attracts and retains high-quality teachers and school support professionals and improves professional development opportunities.
• Protects rigorous standards for entry into the teaching profession that include the concepts of high academic performance, extensive clinical practice and field experience, and demonstrated knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy, child development, and learning acquisition.
• Ensures the statewide implementation of an appropriate and equitable teacher evaluation model and that teachers participate in the process.
• Increases the Equity Fund to provide resources for our most at-risk students.
• Requires at least one registered nurse in every school building.
• Supports the needs of and addresses the inequities in Virginia’s small and rural school divisions.
• Improves, implements, and funds resources, and professional development for educators that incorporate culturally responsive and restorative justice practices and are free of implicit bias.
• Increases state support for general public school construction, infrastructure, and school modernization.
• Improves equitable access to broadband and appropriate technology for all students, communities, and school staff.
• Maintains and improves responsible school operation- al plans that support and protect the safety, mental health, and social and emotional learning of our students, communities, and school staff.

VEA Opposes Legislation That:

• Undermines public-sector labor rights, including collective bargaining rights.
• Undermines the efforts of the Virginia Board of Education to meet its constitutional authority to define the standards for a high-quality public education in our Commonwealth.
• Creates any new requirements for our public schools without the appropriate state share of funding to implement them.
• Provides public dollars to non-public schools.
• Transfers the authority for granting charter schools away from the local school board.
• Undermines the health or retirement benefits of school personnel.
• Repeals any law, rule, or regulation designating any and all school property as a gun-free zone.

We’ll Keep You Informed

Keep up with all the latest legislative news affecting schools by reading VEA’s daily updates during the General Assembly session. You’ll find them here.

Download the 2022 VEA Legislative Agenda Here