While officials in virtually every state agency are scrambling for every dollar they can find, the Virginia Board of Education is proposing that localities hire additional staff for their school divisions.
Such a move would require additional money to pay the staff, but the education board didn’t say who would put up the money. With all the talk in the past about state mandates on the localities, the assumption is the state would increase its share of aid to public education in the localities to cover those added costs.
But that assumption hasn’t always been accurate. The localities have learned from the past that the state is good at coming up with proposals that would improve education or other state programs — but at their expense.
Could that be part of the latest effort on the state’s part to beef up Virginia’s Standards of Quality, the state-mandated goals for public education?
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The Board of Education wants the state to set staffing levels for full-time teachers of special, gifted, and career and technical education. Under proposed changes to the Standards of Quality, each school division would be required to hire additional staff based on students’ disabilities, for example. For gifted students, the new standard would be one teacher per 1,000 students, which doesn’t sound like much of an increase to a program that often has been shortchanged in the public schools.
Current staffing standards for those positions, as The Associated Press reported last week following the board’s meeting in Richmond, have been defined by agency regulations and budget language. If approved, the new proposals would become part of state law.
The proposals are part of the board’s proposed Standards of Quality revisions, which will be forwarded to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the next General Assembly. The legislature, ultimately, will decide whether to approve them and their cost.
The proposals for additional staffing in these important areas of education are undoubtedly sound. But who will pay the additional costs? The state has a long record of passing along mandates to the localities without the money to pay for them.
Lean budget times, such as the one the state — and the localities — are facing don’t mean that needs will go away. But before filling those needs, the state should assure the localities it will pay its share of the additional costs.
The governor and the Assembly will have their hands full balancing the budget to meet current needs when the legislature meets again in January. Any additional needs must come with the assurance that the state will pay its share or more. And to accomplish that, the lawmakers must find new sources of revenue. In 2010, that will be a challenge.
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