Public School Needs Exceed State’s Resources

While the two candidates for governor battle it out on the campaign trail across Virginia, the needs of public education continue to spiral. The election’s winner will have his hands full meeting needs that have been neglected during the economic recession.

And what are the needs that will challenge the next governor? The state Board of Education held a series of hearings across the state last week to get an idea of what lies ahead for the new administration and the new General Assembly, where all 100 seats in the House of Delegates will be decided by the voters.

In a nutshell, as The Washington Post has reported, the problems the board found were these: overworked teachers, shorter library hours, longer bus routes and larger class sizes.

The end result is Virginia has fallen to 37th in the nation in per pupil state spending.

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Both candidates have made public education a key part of their campaign platform. They have said they will improve public schools by raising teacher salaries and strengthening math and science instruction.

State Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, hopes to continue expanding access to pre-kindergarten and create a college scholarship program for students who pledge two years to public service. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and former attorney general, wants to increase the number of charter schools and begin a performance pay system to reward successful teachers.

But Mark E. Emblidge, president of the state Board of Education, said the fundamental challenge in the midst of the recession is not complicated. It is, he said, “How to keep education from coming to a screeching halt.”

That’s a far less than sanguine outlook for the future of Virginia’s 1,800 public schools and 1.2 million students.

School systems throughout the state, including those in Central Virginia, will struggle to do more with less as demands for classroom performance increase because of higher expectations on standardized tests and a new urgency to reverse the dropout rate and prepare more students for college. Large systems facing huge budget shortfalls have little choice but to close some schools and increase class sizes at others. The students are the losers in those situations.

In 2008, Deeds sponsored a bill to raise teacher salaries to the national average. In 2007-2008, the average salary in Virginia was $46,690, compared with $52,308 nationally, according to the National Education Association.

“Cutting your educational funding is like eating your seed corn,” Deeds said in an interview. He has criticized McDonnell’s plans for funding transportation needs through the state’s general fund, nearly half of which goes to public schools.

McDonnell has said he does not expect his plan to pull money away from education because he expects the general fund to grow through economic development. He said he will protect education funding and work to push salaries for teachers to the national average.

Federal stimulus dollars have helped minimize the impact of education budget cuts this year, but the state board heard from teachers and other school employees that the earlier budget cuts should not be permanent. That means the state will have to find the money to make up the difference between what was budgeted for public education this year and what is actually being spent.

And where will that money come from? That’s only one of the issues that either Deeds or McDonnell will have to resolve come next January.