Today both the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee
met to approve their proposed amendments to the current budget and the 2018-2020 biennial budget.
The House Appropriations Committee seeks
to fully fund SOQ rebenchmarking with $480 million. The budget
increases the amount of lottery money being sent to local school divisions by
$91.7 million over the biennium, representing 40% of the total lottery dollars.
There will be an additional $6.1 million in aid to small school divisions with
declining student enrollment. Eligible school divisions would be those with less than 10,000 students with a 5% decrease in enrollment over the last five years. The Committee also recommends a 2% salary increase for school teachers effective July 2019. Lastly, additional funding for the Virginia Preschool Initiative and the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program assessment are also included. For more details, click here for the full presentation and here for Del. Peace's Report from
the Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee's
recommendations. Click here for even more details on the House Appropriation
Committee's budget proposal.
The Senate Finance Committee also seeks to fully fund SOQ rebenchmarking, by increasing direct aid to localities for Education by $259 million in FY 2019 and $307 million in FY 2020. Regarding teacher salary adjustments, the Senate proposes removing the Governor's proposed 2% raise that would have started in December of 2019. Similar to the House, the Committee proposes aid to small school divisions with declining student enrollment, but in the amount $5 million.The Committee recommends maintaining an additional $7.1 million for At-Risk Add-On funding in the second year of the biennium and would allow the funding to be used for teacher recruitment. Other proposals of note include an additional $2 million to career and technical education and $1.5 million for teacher residency models. For more details, click here for Senator Newman's
subcommittee report. Click here and look at the items
under February 18, 2017 for even more details on the Senate Finance Committee's
budget proposal.
