Virginia can finally afford to fund our schools.
If not now, when?
With just two weeks left in this year’s General Assembly, the biggest debate we now face is balancing the budget. The House and Senate each released their own drafts last week, and they’re pretty far apart. The biggest gap between them is in education funding, so I wanted to share with you what these options would mean for our schools.
First, some history.
Virginia has been playing catch up on school funding since the Great Recession. When the ’08 financial crisis cratered state budgets, Virginia ranked among the top 10 states for steepest cuts to per pupil spending. Those cuts endured for a decade until 2020, when Democrats flipped the House and Senate and finally vowed to invest in our schools. Then COVID hit, and Governor Northam paused the teacher pay raises we passed that spring while the economic outlook was uncertain.
But unlike in the Great Recession, state revenue recovered quickly. By the summer of 2021, Virginia was running a $2 billion surplus, the largest in state history. Strong revenues continued into last year, driven largely by record capital gains and corporate taxes. With corporate profits and payouts to shareholders soaring, now’s the time to reinvest in the communities that make Virginia such a great place to do business.
So what can Virginia do with that surplus?
We can finally invest in education:
- In 2021, Virginia ranked dead last in the country for competitive teacher pay. Our public school teachers made 33% less than comparable college grads — little wonder our schools face massive teacher shortages. When school started last fall, there were 3,300 vacant positions statewide.
- Our teachers are hardly the only staff feeling stretched too thin. The Great Recession cuts included a cap on state funding for critical support staff that continues to this day.
The Senate budget addresses both with $1 billion in direct aid to schools. The package includes teacher pay raises and $1,000 bonuses. It lifts the cap on state aid for support staff and provides new funding for nurses, mental health professionals, literacy specialists, and instructors for English language learners. The Senate budget won’t solve shortages overnight, but it’s a critical, overdue step.
And what does the House budget do instead?
Tax cuts — more than $300 million to reduce the corporate tax rate and another $300+ million to lower the top tax bracket. That’s on top of the $4 billion in tax cuts we already passed last year. I’m a big believer that Virginia needs tax reform, as I’ve shared with you before, but not like this.
- Virginia already ranks in the bottom 15 states for lowest corporate tax rates, and companies aren’t clamoring to cut ours further. As Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment acknowledged, the biggest needs we hear from companies looking to settle in Virginia are business-ready work sites and well-trained workers, both of which require state investment.
- Cutting the top bracket won’t put much money back in people’s pockets, either. More than half of all tax payers get less than $50 back from that plan. Far better to lift the state cap on support staff funding and relieve local governments from the tough choice they face between staffing our schools and raising property taxes.
For all of those reasons, I voted against the House budget when it passed last week. I think it’s high-time the state pay its fair share of public education. If the state cuts school funding when recession hits and then cuts taxes when revenue soars, we’ll never get back on track with where our schools need us to be.
I hope you feel like fighting for school funding is the work you sent me here to do. With the two weeks we have left, I’ll keep doing all I can to get the House to raise the bar and do right by our schools. Virginia has been waiting long enough.
