The bills just keep coming. I can’t even guess how many
bills will be filed by midnight on Friday when all must be in the system. Right
now, 2,746 bills have been filed. That is a whole lot to follow!
In good news, the House has itself organized and has started
committee meetings. The new House Education Committee met this morning and
heard a very interesting report from VCU’s Wilder Center for Public Policy. Here’s the link. Overwhelmingly Virginians believe our schools are underfunded.
Doesn’t matter party or zip code. They all agree. This is a significant change
over past years. Clearly the Red 4 Ed movement is driving public opinion.
Virginia is with us.
Legislators are with us, too. VEA Fund-recommended Delegate Jay
Jones (D) and Senator Todd Pillion (R) wrote a great op ed about the need to join
together to fund our schools. The piece focused on how similar the needs are
for so many of our students, no matter where they live.
Senator Jennifer McClellan (D) and Delegate Lashrecse Aird
(D) have both filed bills to fully implement and fund the revised Standards of
Quality issued by the VA Board of Education. Those bills include over $1
BILLION in new money each year for K-12. We will need to fight hard to get that
funding approved.
You know a good way to join the fight? Attend VEA’s Lobby
Day and Fund Our Future Rally on January 27 in Richmond. Click the link at the top of the VEA web site to learn all the details, but make sure you sign up here:
mobilize.us/vea We need to show our
legislators that we are not going away. There will be money to put toward our
public schools. Today, the Governor announced that the latest revenues are well
ahead of forecasts. This money must be invested in K-12. Show up on Lobby Day
and demand that schools be properly funded.
In other exciting news today, Senate Commerce and Labor
advanced VEA’s SB234 (Chafin-R). This bill would allow school employees to
participate in the state health insurance plan. The Senate has been friendly to
this legislation before; the stumbling block has always been House Appropriations.
But this session we will be facing a
whole new Appropriations Committee with friendly legislators, so I am hopeful.
The state actually covers the state share of the prevailing costs for health
care premiums for all SOQ funded positions. The VEA will be building the case
that any state “expense” that may be incurred (even though two actuarial
studies failed to prove there would be increased costs) can be offset by the
SOQ dollars. We will see. We have a House version of the bill patroned by
Delegate Kilgore (R), so we will know what the House will do before crossover.
