By Shelly Simonds, Delegate, Virginia General Assembly
This year’s General Assembly session was especially busy for me as vice chair of the Education Committee in the House of Delegates. As a former teacher, I wish I had chalk and a blackboard to diagram the improvements we debated, with all the arrows pointing toward one thing — our children and the world-class education they deserve.
Virginia is a prosperous state, ranked the best state for business by CNBC, with one of the world’s best higher education systems. Yet we have been under-investing in our K-12 education system for a long time.
My mission in the legislature has been to help Virginia better prepare our students for college and career. That is why I introduced a bill to require more advanced mathematics course offerings for high school students and more support for our teachers, with math coaches in every school. I also introduced a bill to eliminate funding caps on support staff positions in our schools such as school administrators and teaching assistants. The fate of both of these initiatives has come down to funding, and the final budget negotiations are between the legislature and the Governor.
I am confident we can help our children reach higher levels of achievement in areas such as mathematics, but to get there, we also need accountability to ensure our curriculum and teaching methods are helping our students reach new heights.
This year in Richmond, we had a push to reform our Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, with a bill to adjust test schedules and grading systems to improve use of classroom time for teachers and students. These testing reform efforts also sought to make SOL tests more useful to teachers by better aligning them to the curriculum, with more emphasis on critical thinking instead of rote memorization. Better testing is a step in the right direction for higher standards in our schools.
I think the most important debate we had in the General Assembly this year was concerning the outdated formula used to fund our schools. In 2023, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) published a highly critical report on our funding formula. State funding for public education is currently based on staffing needs in schools. However, the staffing ratios used in the formula have not been updated and no longer reflect what school staff are actually paid or what it actually costs to compete for qualified teachers. The overall effect is Virginia is underestimating the resources schools need by more than $1 billion a year.
At a conference on school funding one expert said, “Virginia’s funding formula is out of date, inequitable, not transparent and not working.” Most states have switched to a student-based formula, which provides much more fair funding to schools, more support for students with special needs and allows lawmakers to fund top priorities such as career and technical education. This student-based model is exactly what the JLARC report recommended for Virginia, and I believe now is the time to accomplish this.
With funding cuts from the federal Department of Education, Virginia will have to step up and find a better way to pay for schools. The chaos in Washington may provide the impetus for reforming our funding formula and giving our students the world-class education they need to thrive.
Shelly Simonds represents part of Newport News in the 70th district in the Virginia House of Delegates. A former school board member, she is chair of the K-12 Subcommittee in the House and co-founder of the Career and Technical Education Caucus. She and her husband Paul live in the Denbigh area of Newport News.
