Daily Report August 25, 2020
The Governor introduced a revised 2020-2022 Biennial Budget
in response to the economic downturn caused by COVID-19. This budget cuts most
of the new spending that was unalloted just a few months ago. For our public
schools, this included the nearly $490 million of new spending over the
biennium. The Governor was clear that there will be an opportunity to make
changes again during the regular General Assembly session in January if the
economy picks up, but revenue shortfalls made these difficult decisions necessary.
The VEA believes there are ways to make additional
investments in K-12 even when we face the current economic crisis. In fact, we
know that for schools to open safely and with equity, they need additional
funding to offset the costs of providing equitable virtual instruction or safe
in-person instruction. Both options in the age of COVID force difficult
decisions for this General Assembly. The VEA believes these investments must be
made.
The House of Delegates members have posted their budget
amendments to the revised budget introduced by the Governor. We appreciate the
amendment by Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy to unallot all the nearly $490
million the new K-12 spending including funding for additional school
counselors. She is the only member of the House to introduce an amendment to
reverse the cuts proposed by the Governor. We are also grateful to see Delegate
Kaye Kory’s effort to redirect $4.7 million each year of state support for
School Resource Officers to school mental health professionals. Her amendment
does nothing to stop any school division from deploying SROs in their schools,
it simply shifts state funding to our public schools for mental health
professionals.
Since the Governor introduced his revised budget, a new,
universally impactful issue has come up for our public schools. The significant
reduction in sales has resulted in more of the overall cost of funding the SOQs
to be paid by the state and locality rather than by sales taxes. Those costs
covered by sales tax now go into the larger pot of K-12 direct aid and are
funded at the state/local split of 55% state/45% locality. The issue here is
that local school divisions build budgets for the 2020-2021 school based on tax
revenues that are now not coming in, and instead they are responsible for 45%
of the cost of those programs. This is wholly unexpected, and school divisions
are facing significant shortfalls in their current year budgets without state
support to offset the losses. These losses are estimated to be $95.2 million in
the first year of the biennium and $93.6 million in the second. Delegate Cliff
Hayes has a budget amendment to cover the losses for the first year. His
amendment does not cover the second year as that will need to be evaluated
during the regular January session. The VEA intends to work hard to support
this budget amendment.
VEA just activated an Action Alert on the state budget to address the sales tax issue and protect funding for local school divisions. Please act now by sending an email to your legislator.
