Today the Virginia House and Senate shared their proposed budgets for the next two years. Both budget proposals make progress on key items for our public schools, particularly support for students with disabilities and students from low-income families. However, both budgets fall short in some areas, including not raising the sustainable revenue needed to fund the investments that our students desperately deserve. Ultimately both of these proposals would bring us closer to fully and fairly funded public schools in Virginia, but we still have a long way to go.
The proposals released by the House and Senate appropriations committees today come after former Governor Youngkin’s budget proposal that he released in December (read our statement on that here). Next, representatives from each chamber will come up with a “conference” budget that combines parts of the House and Senate proposals. Virginia’s budgets cover two years, so the amounts below are totals for fiscal years 2027 and 2028 unless otherwise noted.
Key provisions in both budgets include:
- Increased overall funding for public schools.
- The House proposes increasing direct aid for K-12 education by $395 million more than Governor Youngkin. Including early childhood care and education boosts this to $421 million.
- The Senate proposes increasing direct aid for K-12 education by $596 million more than Governor Youngkin. This includes over $100 million in increased revenue for K-12 schools from closing the data center sales tax loophole. Including early childhood care and education boosts this to $650 million.
- The Senate provides $1.25 million for the Joint Subcommittee on Elementary and Secondary Education Funding to advance work over the next two years to revise the K-12 funding formula. The House provides only $250,000. This is essential work that sets the stage for revising our $20+ billion K-12 budget and getting it right should be a focal point of the Spanberger administration.
- Increased support for students with disabilities.
- The House more than doubled flexible add-on funding to better meet the needs of students with disabilities, investing an additional $148.4 million over the upcoming two years.
- The Senate boosted support by $25.6 million over the upcoming two years.
- JLARC found in 2023 that Virginia’s per capita support for students with disabilities had decreased since 2013 after adjusting for inflation; this funding is an important step in the right direction to fixing Virginia’s woefully inadequate support.
- Increased support for students from low-income families.
- The House provided an additional $99.6 million in one-time support as part of a broader $400 million one-time infusion in the upcoming school year. School divisions have the flexibility to wait to spend some of this money the following year if they wish.
- The Senate provided $118.7 million over the biennium, including $20 million in Lottery Funds. These funds are used to permanently increase the at-risk add-on, which allows school divisions to count on the additional resources and make ongoing investments.
- Increased support for safer communities and restorative schools.
- Both the House and Senate boosted support safer communities programs, with the Senate providing an additional $25.1 million in community violence reduction grants and the House providing an additional $20 million for the Safer Communities Program. Creating safer communities is key for creating safer schools.
- The House includes funding to support improved access to evidence-based restorative practices via the development of guidelines and support materials. Unfortunately, it does not appear that either the House or Senate included funding for a proposed restorative practices pilot in high-needs school divisions.
- The Senate included an additional $5 million to support the expansion of community school grants, on top of the $5 million included in the introduced budget.
- Increased overall funding for public schools.
Leaders of both education subcommittees stated support for expanding to all local governments the option to hold a referendum on a 1% local sales tax to support school renovation and construction, which is a positive sign that all of our local communities will gain access to this important option for improving our school buildings. The House Appropriation materials suggests this could raise $1.5 billion a year for local school infrastructure needs.
Ultimately, fully investing in our public schools will require the state to collect more revenue, and legislators could do that by asking the wealthiest Virginians to pay their fair share while reducing the burden on lower- and middle-income taxpayers. Unfortunately neither budget included provisions to make the income tax code fairer while also increasing available funds for our public schools. We will continue to push the legislature and Governor Spanberger to make that a reality next year.
We are encouraged, however, by Senator Lucas’s acknowledgement today that Virginia needs a more progressive tax code. We are also encouraged that the Senate’s budget proposal would let the data center sales and use tax exemption expire on January 1, 2027, which would generate over $1 billion in total revenue and over $100 million in revenue to go towards public school funding.
Both the House and Senate budget proposals make progress towards fully and fairly funded public schools, but we still have a long way to go before our students truly get the support that they need to thrive. We urge legislators to keep these important investments in the final budget to support our students, our schools, our families, and our communities.