RICHMOND, Va. -- Educators and lawmakers alike said a newly-released report is a "must-read" for anyone with an interest in Virginia's public schools.
The 18-month-long study into how state government funds local public education found Virginia falls way behind its counterparts.
The General Assembly tasked the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) with examining the cost of education in Virginia, specifically examining the formula used to calculate how much each school district gets in state funding.
Virginia school districts receive 14% less in state funding per student than the national average, the JLARC study found.
That equates to about $1,900 less per student in Virginia.
Three of the five states that border Virginia spend more per student.
A major source of the problem, the study found, is the formula used to calculate how much money each school district needs to operate, called the Standards of Quality (SOQ).
JLARC researchers said that the formula yields dramatically less funding than districts actually need to operate.
"The SOQ formula calculated school divisions needed a total of $10.7 billion in state and local funding for FY21, but divisions actually spent $17.3 billion on K–12 operations, $6.6 billion more than the funding formula indicated was needed," the study read.
Local governments are left to make up those costs.
"It’s a misnomer to call it the SOQ; it’s not quality at all," an unnamed school administrator cited in the report said. "If we just funded at SOQ level, it would be a catastrophe.”
Among the list of issues with the formula in the report, Virginia uses an outdated method to calculate the number of at-risk students, which is especially important for districts with high levels of students living in poverty, like Richmond.
The formula uses free lunch applications to determine the number of at-risk students in each district, even though a federal program in 2014 no longer required school districts to collect applications, meaning the data used now is old.
"The state’s school nutrition program has developed a more reliable methodology for determining the number of free lunch-eligible (at-risk) students. This program estimated that 53 percent of students in the state are free lunch eligible, in contrast to the outdated free lunch methodology, which recently estimated the at-risk population to be only 39 percent statewide," the report said.
Several Great Recession area school funding policies remain in place like the cap on the number of support staff schools are allowed to hire, which the study said should be lifted.
“It’s information we’ve known," said Gina Patterson, executive director of the Virginia School Boards Association. "If we could also start by maybe talking about eliminating the support caps, that’s a huge piece. I think this report helps us move us in moving that conversation forward because those support caps have been in place since 2009.”
Dr. Scott Brabrand, executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, said the report clearly showed the need to modernize the school funding model in Virginia, particularly shifting from a staffing-based formula to a student-based one.
The report said Virginia is one of nine states to base state funding on projected staffing needs, not student enrollment.
"It's made it needlessly complex for something that is simple: fund the students in our school divisions adequately," Brabrand said. "One of the things that came out of the J-LARC report that I think every parent needs to know, and the educators have known, we've not just been under-funding schools in general in Virginia, we've been under-funding particular groups of students: special education students, second language students.”
On social media, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R - Virginia) blamed past administrations for the ongoing issue and said his team has supported historic levels of school funding.
"[This] report should serve as a wake-up call that our biggest problem and greatest opportunity is how we reform our system to drive dollars to improve student academic achievement, support our teachers, and deliver results to parents," Youngkin wrote on Twitter.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said students bear the brunt of decades of inaction to change the funding model.
"It is past time Virginia fulfills its constitutional obligation and do its part to ensure that Virginians benefit from high-quality public schools. We are tired of waiting," Stoney said.
You can read the entire report here.
Republicans and Democrats remain locked in a dispute over amendments to the state budget where the argument boils down to tax cuts proposed by Republicans and increased spending on education backed by Democrats. This report will likely play a major role in that dispute and General Assembly elections later this year.
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