The Latest from VEA

Dr. James J. Fedderman, President of the Virginia Education Association, released the following statement in response to the proposed state budget Governor Youngkin released this morning: 

“Fixing public education was a major campaign promise for Governor Youngkin. But once elected, it took a backseat to culture wars and partisan politics. And here again, when given the opportunity to be an education governor, Youngkin fails to deliver.

Virginians face numerous crises: educators burning out and leaving in droves; and students, educators and families battling significant mental health challenges, just to name a couple. We had hoped Governor Youngkin’s budget would reflect his campaign promises and address our glaring needs—but today he dashed those hopes, using smoke and mirrors to suggest he’s increasing K-12 funding but in reality, slashing state investment in our K-12 schools by nearly $300 million compared to current funding, and supplanting nearly $400 million in federal pandemic aid.

What we needed to see today were bold proposals, the kind that would attract and retain high-quality school staff. What we got was lip service and deception—a travesty for our hard-working educators and students who deserve so much more. In a completely non-standard move, the governor tried to compare changes in K-12 spending with an earlier version of the budget, rather than the current approved one. He also only talked about investments, and not the hundreds of millions in cuts.

The handful of relatively small education investments, far outweighed by cuts, are an insult to educators and families and don’t come close to what’s needed to improve academic outcomes for students or get educator pay to the national average. We call on state lawmakers to reject these austere cuts and instead make the critical investments our students, staff, and families should expect and rightfully deserve.”

Addressing Our Educator Shortage

This summer, the Virginia Department of Education estimated an average teacher vacancy rate of 4.8%, up from 3.9% the previous school year. Masking this shortage is the fact that applications for provisional teaching licenses have skyrocketed over the past several years – and most provisionally-licensed teachers have little to no training for classroom instruction and do not go on to complete the courses necessary for a full teaching license. With higher vacancies and under-qualified people in our classrooms, Virginia is heading in a dangerous direction that needs immediate correction. The average Virginia teacher pay this school year is estimated to be only $63,756, compared to the pre-pandemic average of $67,188 (FY23 inflation-adjusted dollars). With teacher pay eroding dramatically over the past four years due to inflation, it’s no wonder Virginia is one of the few states to have seen teacher shortages get worse in the 2022-23 school year, not better. Just to get to the national teacher pay average in the next school year – an uncompetitive rate for a high cost-of-living state like Virginia – we’d need to increase SOQ payments by 8%, which would cost the state $436 million. Governor Youngkin proposed a 1% bonus in the first year of the budget, and a measly 2% increase in the second year, for state-supported school employees. When we account for inflation and assume localities meet the full state match, likely the best-case scenario from this proposed budget, average teacher salaries would be $63,358 next school year, and would fall further to $62,954 in the following year (FY23 inflation-adjusted dollars). Under Youngkin’s proposed budget, average teacher pay would continue its downward slide in real terms. 

Rebenchmarking and the Supplanting of Federal Pandemic Aid

In each new budget biennium, the state automatically updates for K-12 costs based on changes to enrollment, federal input, and inflation. While the last round of federal pandemic aid for schools was meant for things like learning loss recovery and intensive tutoring, Governor Youngkin’s administration is using this aid against schools and supplanting it in the standard rebenchmarking costs. Rebenchmarking is intended to keep school systems even in funding, addressing rising costs for things like salaries and facilities. School divisions never anticipated using their pandemic aid for basic rebenchmarking costs, and most have already appropriated 100% of this funding in their current budgets. The governor’s budget supplants $388 million of the federal pandemic aid, which will shortchange our schools and leave them underfunded to cover inflationary costs in their upcoming school budgets. 

The Investments Our Students Deserve

To summarize the long- and near-term recommendations included in this summer’s JLARC report, Virginia is underfunding our schools to the tune of $5 billion per year.  Looking ahead to the 2024-26 biennium through that lens, schools will be facing $10 billion in critical needs outlined by JLARC, $250 million to fully lift the artificial cap on support positions, about $650 million to get Virginia’s teacher pay to the national average and address our current educator shortages, a $25 billion (as of 2021) backlog in school infrastructure needs, $200 million to provide more adequate staffing ratios for school counselors and mental health staff, and at least $120 million to scale community schools, training, and classroom resources. Rather than address any of these needs, the governor has proposed nearly $300 million in CUTS to state K-12 funding compared to current spending over the next two years. For all the governor’s bluster about “restoring excellence,” “historic investments in education,” and “parents mattering,” his proposed cuts to K-12 education in the face of such overwhelming need speak volumes about how much he truly cares about our students’ success.

Upside Down Tax Policy 

Virginia’s lowest-income residents on average pay the highest share of their incomes to state and local taxes, while our richest residents pay the lowest share. Our relatively flat income tax paired with regressive sales taxes leads to this upside-down system, which year after year is woefully inadequate to fund our schools. In the annual Making the Grade report released by the Education Law Center last week, Virginia again received D grades across the board on Funding Effort, Funding Level, and Funding Distribution compared to all other states for K-12 funding. With so much ground to make up, Governor Youngkin’s proposed budget with major tax and K-12 funding cuts will put Virginia further behind. His tax reforms, furthermore, will shift additional financial burden onto our lowest income families while dramatically reducing the tax liability for Virginia’s wealthiest individuals, like himself. This is an unfair and unsustainable tax proposal that would strangle resources from our classrooms. And while Governor Youngkin promised that grocery tax reforms in the last budget wouldn’t hurt schools down the line, lo and behold, in this budget he eliminates this “hold harmless” funding and cuts K-12 funding by more than $200 million. It is shameful for him to renege on this promise. 

We call on state lawmakers to reject this regressive tax proposal and instead structure a tax reform that raises adequate revenue to meet our K-12 funding needs and asks individuals and corporations who can most afford it to pay their fair share.