McDonnell’s War on K-12 Education
The Commonwealth of Virginia is currently facing a $4.5 billion shortfall in the 2010-2012 biennial budget. All of this is on top of the $7 billion already cut under the prior biennial budget. Information continues to emerge in small doses about rumored cuts to be proposed by Gov. McDonnell. It’s hard to figure out exactly what McDonnell will propose, since many of his meetings are taking place behind closed doors and he has continuously refused to share his ideas with the public. Based on various published reports, it appears that McDonnell plans on recommending more than $680 million be cut from K-12 education. This would represent more than 40% of the $1.7 billion in cuts he has been rumored to be proposing. This savings would be realized by moving away from the state’s Standards of Quality mandates. I’ll discuss this more in a moment.
The main funding formula that is used to determine state versus local education funding responsibility is something called the Local Composite Index (LCI). The LCI is the result of a four-decade old Supreme Court ruling that sought to uphold the constitutional guarantee that all children are required to receive an equivalent education. How the LCI is calculated is a bit complicated. Basically it weights a localities real property value, per capita income and student population against the rest of the Commonwealth.
Every year the LCI is rebenchmarked to reflect the economic climate. Gov. Kaine had proposed, prior to leaving office, to delay rebenchmarking for one year to save approximately $29 million. When Gov. McDonnell took office he had initially said that he would uphold Gov. Kaine’s decision and actually took it a step further by proposing to delay rebenchmarking the index until FY ’12. In Stafford County, this would have resulted in a $4.5 million reduction of education funding from the state. The state would have only been required to provide 63.71 percent of Stafford’s school budget.
Gov. McDonnell finally succumbed to public pressure and announced that he would indeed allow this key index to be rebenchmarked this year. The winners locally would be Stafford and Fredericksburg. The state would now be responsible for providing 66.38 percent (a 2.67% increase) of Stafford’s and 22.37 percent (a 1.8% increase) of Fredericksburg’s school budget. Spotsylvania County would actually receive 2.59 percent less funds from the state. I’m hearing that would reduce Spotsylvania’s state funding by $1.1 million.
As I mentioned earlier, Gov. McDonnell is rumored to be planning on cutting more than $680 million of K-12 education funds by moving away from the state’s Standards of Quality mandates. These mandates define the “minimum” requirements of a “basic” education in Virginia. The major budget driver is the staffing standard contained within the Standards of Quality. The staffing standards prescribe teacher to student, principal to student, librarian to student, school counselor to student and clerical to student ratios; maximum class sizes; the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) instructional positions for students needing Prevention, Intervention, and Remediation services; limited English proficiency teacher to student ratios; art, music and physical education teacher to student ratios in grades K-5; and technology support to student ratios. Also, depending on a school division’s combined failure rate on the English and Mathematics Standards of Learning tests the teacher to student ratio ranges would fluctuate within those areas. What I just described is at a high level and things are broken out in much more detail within the Standards of Quality. Additionally, the staffing requirements must also conform to the 2009 Appropriation Act.
It is important to reiterate that these standards represent a “minimum” standard. Many school districts exceed these requirements by further reducing the aforementioned ratios. Based on these “minimum” standards a locality does not currently receive any state funds for any art, music or physical education teachers above 5th grade. If a school wants to provide these essential positions, they must find the funding for them locally. Again, the Standards of Quality are “minimum” education standards.
Let’s get back to what is rumored to be Gov. McDonnell’s education war plan. He wants to move away from the Standards of Quality, which could only mean that he will propose increasing the aforementioned student ratios, potentially eliminate intervention funding for struggling students, and potentially eliminate K-5 state funding for the arts, music and physical education. So at a time when we should be talking about raising our education standards, McDonnell’s solution may be to drop them. How will this lead to a more competitive workforce? While other countries are investing more money and raising standards, we are going to reduce them?
Let me state in no uncertain terms that McDonnell’s plan to allow the LCI to rebenchmark combined with a lowering of the Standards of Quality will lead to a decrease in funding for most school districts, regardless of the results of the rebenchmarking. Anything now above these even lower “minimum” standards will now have to be paid for by the localities. With many localities struggling, this could only mean an even deeper cut to our education services and many more teacher layoffs.
I strongly urge everyone to contact the Governor’s office and demand that our standards be raised and not lowered! It’s past time for Gov. McDonnell to level with all Virginians and end the closed-door meetings.