October 15, 2020
Word started breaking late yesterday that there was an
agreement between House and Senate Budget Conferees on the amendments to the
2020-2022 Biennial Budget. The conference report eventually was made available
for us to see. I won’t lie to you—I was completely relieved when I was able to
take a quick look at a couple of top lines.
First thing I looked for was Average Daily Membership (ADM)
hold harmless language. As you know, most school divisions have seen a decline
in student enrollment as result of COVID-19. The Virginia Association of School
Superintendents (VASS) estimates a decline of just about 40,000 students
state-wide. While that is a small percentage of the 1.2 million students in our
public schools, the decline would result in cuts in the CURRENT YEAR school
budgets of up to $150 million. Those cuts would be devastating to most school
budgets and most divisions would need to look at furloughs or lay-offs for
school employees.
Our members sent emails, made calls, and told their stories
to legislators, and we were heard. The conference budget includes full hold
harmless language for the 2020-2021 school year. Keep in mind the original
Senate budget did not include that language. The Senate also killed a bill that
would have held school divisions harmless because they saw it as an issue for
the Regular Session in January. Our members changed the minds of the Senate! We
must thank the House leadership and especially the Chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee, Delegate Luke Torian, for understanding the need for
this budget item and fighting for it to be included in the conference report.
The second item I looked for was the $95.2 million we asked
for to fill holes left by reduced sales tax revenues for public schools. Again,
the House led this fight with Delegate Cliff Hayes including a budget amendment
to fill the hole. He was the only member of the House or Senate to fight for
this fix from the very beginning. He understood the need and he proposed a
solution. Both the House and Senate included the money in their budgets, and we
are very glad to see that the conference budget keeps the allocation in place.
Again, our members called, emailed, and reached out to their legislators to let
them know the potential impact on the CURRENT YEAR budget without this help. We
were heard. This action, along with the ADM language, will protect jobs and
ensure that we maintain the educational capacity in our public schools to bring
students back to our school buildings once it is safe to do so.
Sadly, we are now at a place where we needed to triage the
most threatening wounds to our current budgets. We won that battle, but the
victory our public schools need is still ahead. We have not recovered from the
devastating cuts left over from the 2009 recession and now we are facing another
economic downturn without a clear end in sight. Virginia cannot allow our
public schools to be the last to recover. This crisis has shown everyone the
economic driver our public schools are. It has also laid bare the inequities
that exist across the Commonwealth and between neighborhoods. The pandemic has
exposed for all to see the impact of our delays in closing the digital divide,
our lack of systemic support for our at-risk students who live in poverty, the impact on our Special Education students
when their IEPs aren’t met or staffed, the lack of sufficient school staff to
support the mental health and safety of our students, the role our schools play
in feeding students, and the role our public schools play in supporting working
parents and families.
While the pandemic has shown us how far we need to go, there
is a path to follow. For the last five years the Virginia Board of Education
has issued and prescribed revisions to the Standards of Quality that are
focused on equity of opportunity and equity of services. It is well past time
for the General Assembly to do more than what we have seen each session in each
of these years—agreement in principle but not in dollars. “We would if we
could, but we can’t” is not an acceptable plan. Instead the General Assembly
needs to prioritize our public schools and follow the clear path the Board has
laid out. You don’t need to leave breadcrumbs; the path is completely mapped
out—adopt and fully fund the revisions to the Standards of Quality as
prescribed by the Board of Education. Yes, it is expensive, but our public
schools have been waiting for more than a decade, and they have been
underfunded every single year of that decade. The impact of the COVID-19 crisis
on our public schools, on our kids, and on our families should be all the
evidence that is needed to make our public schools Virginia’s number one
priority. It is well past time.
