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Virginia’s public school buildings are aging, underfunded, and leaving students to learn in worsening conditions.
Why Virginia Needs Updated Schools Now
- Over half of Virginia’s schools are over 50 years old, and the state has identified $25 billion of backlog infrastructure needs in 2021.
- Virginia contributed $1.25 billion for school infrastructure in the most recent budget for the next two years, a historic increase but likely not enough to meet the growing backlog in a typical year.
- Virginia’s oldest schools are in many of the state’s poorest localities, where communities have the
least ability to raise local revenue. - Updated air filtration systems are essential to mitigating the spread of COVID in schools, and
additional funding is needed to modernize all buildings. - Many schools are not ADA compliant – preventing students with disabilities from fully engaging in
safe and accessible public schooling. - Investing in school infrastructure will yield returns over the long-term, boost local economies
with new construction jobs, and, as numerous studies conclude, lead to improved student outcomes, school climate, health, teacher effectiveness, and stronger teacher retention.
Virginia Is Neglecting Its Students’ Learning Conditions
- The state covered only 10% of school infrastructure needs between 2009-2020, leaving localities with vastly different capacities to raise revenue to pay the rest. No student in a high-income state like Virginia should have to learn in a crumbling school, regardless of zip code.
- Virginia’s contribution to school infrastructure has been among the lowest of any state in the country, and every other neighboring state and D.C. offer ongoing direct support to school divisions for infrastructure needs. Virginia should commit to a sustainable state support model.
- Aging school infrastructure is related to worse instruction for students, negatively impacts student achievement, increased absenteeism, and increased dropout rates.
- Research has shown that poor infrastructure in rural schools negatively affected student outcomes more than teacher turnover and socioeconomic challenges.
Virginia Has the Resources To Bring Its Schools Into the 21st Century by:
- Implement the bipartisan Commission on Social Construction and Modernization recommendations.
- Identify sustainable revenue streams that can fund school infrastructure in the billion-dollar range each budget cycle and work to reduce our infrastructure backlog.
- Allow localities to hold referendums to increase their own sales tax for school infrastructure.
Invest in evidenced-based approaches to improve student outcomes
Why Compensation Matters
- Effective teachers are the most important school-based determinant of student educational performance. Low pay in Virginia is contributing to teacher and other school staff shortages.
- Higher pay attracts high-achieving young people to enter the teaching profession and helps keep teachers from leaving the profession. Teachers gain critical experience and skills over the first few years of their careers and experienced teachers play a critical role as mentors for new colleagues.
- Shortages of teachers and support staff are creating challenges across Virginia. Statewide, unfilled teaching positions rose to 2,594 in 2021-22, up from 877 during the 2018-2019 school year. Likewise, Virginia’s students began the 2021-2022 school year short on instructional aides and paraprofessionals (1,367 vacancies, 771 in special education) and bus drivers (2,045 vacancies).
- The pandemic has exacerbated staff shortages and student achievement gaps that already existed. Students, especially those historically disadvantaged, will require additional supports as they recover from lost learning and other impacts potentially affecting mental health and well-being.
Teacher Pay in Virginia is Low Compared to Other States and Professions
- Virginia teachers are paid, on average, just 67 cents for each dollar paid to their similarly educated peers in other professions. This is the third biggest pay penalty in the country.
- In 2021, Virginia teachers were paid 10% less than the U.S. average even before adjusting for Virginia’s typically high wages for other professions. As salaries elsewhere grow, catching Virginia’s teacher pay up to the national average by the 2023-24 school year will require an increase of at least 13% from estimated 2021-22 levels.
- Support staff working full-time in Virginia’s public schools have average earnings of just $32,755.
Virginia Can Do More
- Virginia is a high-capacity state with high median incomes and a strong economy, yet it does less than most other states to fund an adequate education. Virginia received an “F” grade in the Education Law Center’s annual school funding report for combined state and local spending compared to both the cost of providing a quality education and the state’s ability to pay.
- The state is providing its portion of a 5% staff salary increase this year and next, but this won’t be enough to reach the national teacher pay average and may not even keep up with inflation.
- State policymakers must protect and enhance the ability of local governments to pay their share of school costs, including the local share of teacher pay increases. Some rural counties already struggle to meet their minimum required contributions to public education.
With no guarantee of state funding beyond a year, universities will be taking a high-stakes risk for students and themselves to experiment with lab schools.
What to make of laboratory schools
- When it became clear that charter schools would not be expanded during the 2022 legislative session, lawmakers switched to supporting the expansion of college partnership laboratory schools which are public schools established by higher education institutions by contract between a governing board of the “lab school” and the Virginia Board of Education.
- Lab schools have been allowed in Virginia for many years and have failed to organically grow through mutual interest between school divisions and colleges and universities.
- The current state budget includes a one-time allocation of $100 million for lab school planning and starter grants and per pupil funding for approved schools during the current biennium only.
- Higher education institutions will take a large risk establishing lab schools and should be prepared to shoulder the full cost of operating these schools into the future without any sustaining funding from the state or local level.
- Lab schools have a limited track record nationally and represent a highly experimental approach to fulfill a campaign promise and create new schools for which there has not been demand.
No strong basis to invest significant funds to serve a small number of students
- While setting aside $100 million to establish lab schools, legislators cut more than $100 million in At-Risk Add On funds which would have supplemented our highest poverty schools, reaching hundreds of thousands of students. The benefits of investing in At-Risk Add On far outweigh the one-time investment to establish lab schools, that realistically will only support the start-up of a handful of new schools and serve a relatively small number of select students.
- The state budget makes clear that community colleges and private universities are eligible to apply to establish a lab school but are not eligible to receive funding from the $100 million grant fund. There is much legal ambiguity for these entities preceding to apply for any grant funds.
Let’s invest in what works for students, not campaign pledges
- State education experts have researched high-return-on-investment K-12 strategies for years and made recommendations through the Virginia Board of Education to update our Standards of Quality. These include investing in critical school staff like reading specialists, vice principals, nurses, behavioral health specialists, teacher mentorships, and in high poverty schools (all evidence-based investments with strong track records). Lab schools have no such track record.
- Decades of longitudinal research has come to the conclusive finding that money matters for educational outcomes. While it might be convenient to imagine silver bullet reform efforts that serve a small number of students is enough, Virginia remains bottom tier for state per student spending, hovering between low-resource states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Moving out of the bottom tier to better serve all students will require focused and research-informed investments.
No matter their race, genders, or where they come from, all students deserve the freedom to fully express their authentic selves free from harassment. Yet, Governor Youngkin’s new proposed guidelines target and stigmatize LGBTQ+ students, threatening their safety and well-being in schools.
Youngkin Proposed Guidelines Dangerous for Students
- On Friday, Sep. 16, the Youngkin administration quietly released, “Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools.” Far from being evidenced or community informed, the drafted policies had no public input. The policies will:
- Compel school staff, regardless of their desire to protect students, to “out” transgender students, creating likely scenarios that expose students to emotional and physical abuse from unaccepting parents.
- Disregard students’ genders and force them to use school facilities and programs matching their birth sex.
- Allow staff and students to bully and harass transgender students by not using their names and pronouns. Misgendering students is incredibly harmful to their emotional well-being.
- Create additional barriers for students to change their names and genders at school.
- Like with previous guidelines, school divisions ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ENACT these new policies.
>Research Shows New Policy Will Make Schools Less Safe for LGBTQ+ Youth
- When transgender people are aware of anti-trans policies being introduced into their state, they report higher levels of discrimination, greater depressive symptoms, and a decreased sense of belonging.
- Students experience better mental health outcomes when school officials respect their gender and use their chosen names.
- Research shows that when transgender students feel more connected to their school, they are less likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. Schools that adopt the Youngkin administration’s proposed policies will operationalize anti-trans policies and harassment.
- All students deserve to feel safe, and transgender youth report being physically threatened or harmed at twice the rate of other student groups. Outing students will only increase this.
- Having non-discrimination policies reduces LGBTQ+ bullying and increases the presence of positive mental and physical health indicators.
Virginia Can Make Schools More Welcoming for All Students
- The 2021 model policies developed and informed by community partners serving LGBTQ+ youth, the Virginia Department of Education, and over 9,000 public comments were widely praised by advocates who serve and work on behalf of LGBTQ+ students. The current administration sought no guidance on their new policy guidelines. School divisions can and should choose to implement the 2021 evidenced-based guidelines and reject the dangerous new policies.
- Schools with student groups affirming all genders and sexual orientations have been shown to have less truancy and better health outcomes for all students. Students who engage more in these groups felt more validated at school, an increased sense of safety, and were more hopeful. Virginia schools should seek to grow and support these groups to improve student outcomes.
- Virginia should look to other states that have a track record of improving conditions for transgender students, like Minnesota’s “Safe and Supportive Schools Act,” which defines bullying, provides training for teachers, programming for students, and procedures around reporting and responses to bullying. Virginia school boards can also pass model affirming resolutions.
- Virginia should join the seven other states in the country that mandate LGTBQ+ inclusion in school curricula and standards, so all students can better see their identities reflected in school settings.
Severe underfunding has led to English Learners in Virginia having remarkably low outcomes nationally. The state must do more to support this critical student group.
Why Additional Support for English Learners (ELs) Can’t Wait
- More than 1 in 8 Virginia K-12 students are current or former EL students.
- Exceptionally low funding contributes to Virginia ranking in the bottom 10 states for EL graduation rates and 8th-grade reading performance on “The Nation’s Report Card” (the NAEP).
- EL students in Virginia saw the largest percentage drop in SOL pass rates among all subgroups measured for every subject test between 2019 and 2021. Undoubtedly, EL students faced among the most barriers to learning during the pandemic and need additional support.
- EL students were more likely to live in homes experiencing economic hardship over the pandemic.
Our Current Funding Model is Leaving English Learners Behind
- For state supplemental support of EL students, Virginia only contributes a third (13.5%) of the national average (39%) beyond the baseline allocation. Virginia’s budget for this and next fiscal year failed to include any new targeted EL funding, despite the first draft including $22 million.
- Unlike other states, Virginia fails to fund training for general education teachers who work most with EL students and doesn’t support EL learning materials.
- Limited advanced coursework opportunities lead fewer EL students to post-secondary education.
- Graduation rates have been mostly stagnant over the past decade for EL students, despite improving for other student groups the state measures.
Virginia Can’t Afford Not to Invest in English Learners. Opportunities Include:
- Provide more adequate state funding to support EL students, similar to the national average for state supplemental support – this would be a supplement around $132 to $169 million annually.
- Fund Virginia Board of Education updates to the Standards of Quality to increase EL instructor to student ratios more for students with less English proficiency, as national experts recommend.
- Follow the example of states like Maryland and Michigan, and commission independent studies to assess adequate state-funding levels for EL students.
- Provide EL students with more pathways to academic rigor by automatically enrolling qualified EL students in advanced courses (with an opt-out option).
- Diversify the teacher workforce by scaling teacher pipelines programs like JMU’s “Grow Your Own” program which covers education costs for a commitment to teach in high-need school divisions.
- Increase funding for community schools and wrap-around services to support immigrant families and EL students with essential services to break down barriers to learning.
Models that support evidence-based interventions to best serve students.
Community Schools Models offer integrated health and social supports, expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities, active family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership and practices. Through decades of implementation in other states with clear evidence of improved student outcomes, Virginia should support and expand these models with state funding.
Why Community Schools Matter
- Student success is impacted by factors inside and outside the school. Community schools break down barriers through wrap-around health and nutrition services, before and after school activities, leveraging community resources, and much more, so students can focus on learning.
- These schools have a proven track record over decades of improving outcomes including attendance, graduation, and academic gains, and these findings are particularly pronounced for students living in deep poverty and/or low-resource rural communities and English learners.
- Community schools models start with an assessment of needs and local assets, involving all community stakeholders to build collaboration and buy-in. These models are tailored to bring teachers, staff, volunteers, local businesses, and families together to best meet student needs.
Community Schools Help Students and Communities Thrive
- Research shows that community schools improve graduation rates, reduce racial and economic achievement gaps, improve test scores, decrease behavioral offenses, and improve literacy rates.
- Community schools are cost effective investments that reduce duplication and centralize local services. Research finds every $1 invested in these models returns up to $15 in benefits to the community. Significant federal resources exist to leverage for sustaining these school models.
- Increased learning time and out-of-school opportunities improve attendance and achievement.
- Research from the non-partisan RAND Corporation finds community schools models see a significant reduction in disciplinary incidents and chronic absenteeism.
Charter schools on average have little to no impact on student outcomes and tend to increase segregation. Virginia should focus time and energy on investing in what’s proven to work: high-quality instruction and creating positive learning environments where all students have the support they need to focus on learning.
Charters Remain Largely Unproven
- Large-scale aggregate reviews of charter schools have found on average no measurable improvements in student achievement for students that switch from traditional schools to charters.
- Charter schools are more segregated than traditional public schools and the share of minority charter students has declined over time. In North Carolina, a state with a charter authorization process similar to what was proposed in Virginia in 2022, multiple studies have found the expansion of these schools contributed to significant racial segregation. White parents were more likely to select charter schools with less student diversity, even if further away and offering less services.
- Studies of specific charters or using aggregate student data often cherry pick information and have a poor track record of accounting for actual impacts. High quality compilations of peer reviewed and longitudinal studies that track students who switch or fail to get into a charter via lottery tend to show no measurable impact on student outcomes.
Unintended Consequences of Unmitigated Charter Growth
- Virginia’s existing 7 charters were created to fill a demonstrated need, were thoroughly vetted by local Boards of Education, and had significant community support. The rapid expansion of charters that was proposed during the 2022 legislative session would have disrupted the existing process, likely leading to lower quality and unnecessary schools that divert resources from existing public schools.
- Students with relatively more family privilege and from higher income households are more likely to apply to and leave for charters – in turn, concentrating disadvantage in the schools they depart.
- When a student leaves their neighborhood school for a charter, the fixed cost of running the neighborhood school remains the same, but the funding has been lost. Districts must cover this loss in some way (raising property taxes, eliminating staff positions, closing schools).
- VA public school enrollment is projected to decline for the next decade, due to declining birth rates. A period of declining enrollment is not the time to create new schools competing for the dwindling population; doing so will cause division of increasingly scarce resources.
With no guarantee of state funding beyond a year, universities will be taking a high-stakes risk for students and themselves to experiment with lab schools.
What to make of laboratory schools
- When it became clear that charter schools would not be expanded during the 2022 legislative session, lawmakers switched to supporting the expansion of college partnership laboratory schools which are public schools established by higher education institutions by contract between a governing board of the “lab school” and the Virginia Board of Education.\
- Lab schools have been allowed in Virginia for many years and have failed to organically grow through mutual interest between school divisions and colleges and universities.
- The current state budget includes a one-time allocation of $100 million for lab school planning and starter grants and per pupil funding for approved schools during the current biennium only.
- Higher education institutions will take a large risk establishing lab schools and should be prepared to shoulder the full cost of operating these schools into the future without any sustaining funding from the state or local level.
- Lab schools have a limited track record nationally and represent a highly experimental approach to fulfill a campaign promise and create new schools for which there has not been demand.
No strong basis to invest significant funds to serve a small number of students
- While setting aside $100 million to establish lab schools, legislators cut more than $100 million in At-Risk Add On funds which would have supplemented our highest poverty schools, reaching hundreds of thousands of students. The benefits of investing in At-Risk Add On far outweigh the one-time investment to establish lab schools, that realistically will only support the start-up of a handful of new schools and serve a relatively small number of select students.
- The state budget makes clear that community colleges and private universities are eligible to apply to establish a lab school but are not eligible to receive funding from the $100 million grant fund. There is much legal ambiguity for these entities preceding to apply for any grant funds.
Let’s invest in what works for students, not campaign pledges
- State education experts have researched high-return-on-investment K-12 strategies for years and made recommendations through the Virginia Board of Education to update our Standards of Quality. These include investing in critical school staff like reading specialists, vice principals, nurses, behavioral health specialists, teacher mentorships, and in high poverty schools (all evidence-based investments with strong track records). Lab schools have no such track record.
- Decades of longitudinal research has come to the conclusive finding that money matters for educational outcomes. While it might be convenient to imagine silver bullet reform efforts that serve a small number of students is enough, Virginia remains bottom tier for state per student spending, hovering between low-resource states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Moving out of the bottom tier to better serve all students will require focused and research-informed investments.
Virginia can scale add-on for high-poverty schools to adequately fund all students.
At-Risk Add-On Supports Students Who Face the Most Barriers
- At-Risk Add-On funding is distributed to school divisions based on the percentage of free lunch participants and may be used for a variety of initiatives, including teacher recruitment, dropout prevention, English learner support, counselors, licensed behavior specialists, and programs to help students complete high school and further education and training.
- Virginia’s school funding formula relies heavily on localities, who fund their schools primarily with property tax revenue. Lower property values mean less funding for essential public services. This condition led to the Education Law Center giving Virginia a “D” grade for overall funding effort in their 2022 ranking report.
- The variation in localities’ ability to raise revenue leads to differing educational experiences across the state, with students from areas with high concentrations of poverty receiving inadequate support and having fewer opportunities than those in wealthier areas, who tend to have newer textbooks, more electives, newer technology, fewer staff vacancies, and smaller class sizes.
At-Risk Add-On funding targets additional state support to divisions with higher concentrations of students living in poverty. Studies show that students facing more barriers and living in poverty generally need an additional supplement of 40-200% more funding to have education outcomes comparable to students not living in poverty.
Virginia Can Move Out of Bottom Tier and Start Funding Based on Need
- Virginia has steadily improved funding for the At-Risk Add-On over the past several years, but the state is still bottom tier for funding distribution and 40th in the country for state per student funding.
- Scaling the At-Risk Add-On would provide flexible support for schools to invest in essential services, particularly for student groups that have traditionally been underinvested in, including students in homes experiencing poverty, students in rural settings, and students learning English.
- With low likelihood of any near term updates to Virginia’s core K-12 funding formula, which hasn’t been revamped in decades, greatly scaling the At-Risk Add-On is the best prospect to adequately account for student need in state funding.
When we zoom out and consistently see race, history of housing segregation, and poverty as overwhelming indicators of a school being designated as not fully accredited (often called “failing” by policymakers and media), then it becomes abundantly clear that policy choices over many years contributed to and sustain this trend. Virginia lawmakers must begin adequately resourcing these schools.
State policy choices created conditions at not fully accredited schools
- In the most recent accreditation year, 132 schools were “accredited with conditions,” meaning they were not fully accredited. These schools must work with the Virginia Department of Education on improvement plans described in a recent state investigation as “largely a compliance exercise.” Aside from limited advice, no additional resources or support is provided to these schools.
- Schools not fully accredited in the 2019-2020 school year received less state and local funding per student on average than fully accredited schools. Many funding adequacy studies show students facing more barriers and living in poverty generally need an additional funding supplement of 40-200% to have education outcomes comparable to students not living in poverty.
- In the most recent accreditation year, 54% of students in schools accredited with conditions were Black, despite only making up 22% of the student population statewide. Black students are the only overrepresented racial or ethnic group in schools that are accredited with conditions.
- When politicians use “failing schools” rhetoric in Virginia, they are mostly talking about majority Black schools in neighborhoods segregated and impoverished through state-sanctioned policy.
- Data from the Virginia Department of Education designates 70% of schools without full accreditation as “high-poverty,” compared to only 20% of fully accredited schools.
- Schools without full accreditation have a higher share of inexperienced teachers (5.2% vs 4.5%) and twice the teacher vacancy rates (October 2021) than fully accredited schools (4.6% vs 2.3%).
Prioritize evidenced-based investments to support not fully accredited schools
- While it might be convenient for lawmakers to imagine that schools with high-need students just require better advice or silver bullet reform efforts that don’t cost more money, decades of research has come to the conclusion that money matters for student outcomes.
- High impact investments to improve outcomes at not fully accredited schools include:
- Significantly scale the At-Risk Add On to provide more aid to high-poverty schools.
- Fully lift the “support cap” that limits state aid for critical school support positions.
- Invest in community school models to break down student barriers to education.
- Fully fund the Virginia Board of Education’s revisions to the Standards of Quality.
- Pay educators and staff competitive wages to attract and retain high-quality workers.
- Provide Office of School Quality more resources to support not fully accredited schools.
Invest in evidence-based approaches to improve student outcomes
Why now is the time to reach our Standards of Quality
State aid for public education is still down from 2009 levels. This means local divisions are left paying more than what is required by localities in the state’s primary funding formula. High poverty divisions and divisions with the most students of color struggle to make up these funds, resulting in vast inequities in educational opportunity across the state. Schools are struggling to provide adequate staffing, resulting in insufficient counselors, social workers, instructional aides, and administrative and custodial staff. The pandemic has only widened these gaps, and students need full and fair school funding more than ever before.
Solution
In the fall of 2021, the Virginia Board of Education issued a set of Standards of Quality (SOQs) recommendations which, if funded, would go far to increase educational opportunity for Virginia’s children. The estimated annual cost of funding these SOQs is $813 million more than what the state currently spends, but this is just the minimum cost the state Board says is necessary to meet the state’s constitutional duty to ensure a high quality education for Virginia’s students. It is now up to the General Assembly to adopt these SOQs, and fully fund it. Doing this would:
- Add new funds for high-poverty schools through the Enhanced At-Risk Add-On.
- Increase funding for school counselors to ensure there is one counselor for every 250 students.
- Increase funding for English learner students based on proficiency.
- Increase a host of other critical support positions in schools and programing.
Why Fund the SOQs Matters
- The Education Law Center finds that K-12 funding per student is basically flat in Virginia between the highest and lowest poverty school divisions. Experts note it can cost as much as 40% more to educate a student in poverty than a student not in poverty.
- For students to receive the full benefits of a comprehensive school counseling program, school counselors’ caseloads should not exceed 250 students.
- Students have the right to a high-quality education. Our underinvestment of our students today will have damaging implications for their future.
Evidence does not support vouchers in Virginia
What Are Vouchers and Savings Accounts?
Traditional school vouchers and newer versions such as Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) are mechanisms to send public dollars to families who choose to forgo public K-12 education and pursue private school or home schooling. The redirected public school money from vouchers is typically used to partially subsidize private or religious school costs. Money deposited in an ESA can often be used by the family to pay for private school tuition and fees or for education expenses.
Evidence Doesn’t Support Expanding Vouchers
K-12 vouchers do not improve student outcomes </h4
- The Brookings Institution reviewed vouchers studies from four states and found that students who took advantage of these programs to attend private schools performed worse on tests than similar students who do not attend private schools.
- The National Bureau of Economic Research found “a large proportion of the most rigorous studies suggest that being awarded a voucher has an effect that is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
- A 2018 University of Virginia study found no benefit for students attending private schools, including for students from low-income families and urban settings.
Vouchers divert much-needed resources from public schools
- Virginia already severely underfunds its public schools — ranking 40th in per-student spending out of all states for pre-K-12. Diverting more funding to private schools will exacerbate financial challenges for public schools.
- Research has found that Wisconsin’s K-12 voucher program shortchanged public schools and has created a significant financial threat.
Vouchers increase segregation and discrimination, do not impact satisfaction or safety
- Virginia experimented with vouchers during Massive Resistance in an effort to reject school integration efforts. Voucher programs in Indiana have tended to favor higher-income white families, and in Louisiana have led to white families leaving more diverse schools.
- Private schools participating in voucher programs are generally free to accept or reject students based on perceived at-risk status, academic ability, religion, sexual orientation or gender-identity. As of a 2016 review, no voucher program in the country protects LGBTQ+ students against discrimination. This allows private schools to select only the most advantaged students and reject children with the greatest need of support.
- Participating private schools are not required to set tuition at the voucher value. A previous ESA voucher bill in Virginia would have provided payment of about $4,500, while average private school tuition costs in Virginia are over $11,500 for elementary schools and closer to $17,000 for middle and high schools. When you factor in additional costs of transportation and uniforms, this effectively excludes the lowest income families from being able to participate.
- On average, parents of students who switch to private schools with vouchers do not see a change in satisfaction of sense of school safety.
What Works to Improve Student Outcomes
With students and schools still recovering from the setbacks of the pandemic, we can’t afford to start shifting investments to unproven voucher programs that have poor track records for improving student outcomes. Research is clear that investing in public schools improves student outcomes, graduation and postsecondary enrollment. Lawmakers should look to invest in research-backed initiatives that our Board of Education and student-advocacy groups in the state have been pointing to for years, like funding that revised Standards of Quality and lifting the support cap which adds to our current support staff shortages.
Educational Support Professionals (ESPs) are the essential non-teaching staff that ensure Virginia students get the services they need to succeed at school (i.e., bus drivers, librarians, classroom aides, custodial staff, food service providers, etc.). They are critical to welcoming, safe, and healthy school communities and deserve to be treated like the professionals they are. That starts with a fair wage and safer working conditions.
ESPs Are Committed to Students and Communities
- ESPs are committed to their communities, with 66% of ESPs reporting giving their own money to help schools provide supplies, field trips, and class projects – averaging $264 a year.
- ESPs are invested in the school community, with 71% living in the school district where they work, and research shows students do best when the staff understands community and cultural needs.
- Research shows that well-trained and supported ESPs help attend to students’ emotional and behavioral needs inside and outside the classroom.
- Having robust, safe, and compensated support staff within public schools results in a higher quality of service and more accountability than outsourcing or privatization.
ESPs are Essential and Deserve Better
- ESPs in Virginia currently make, on average, $13,000 less than the state living wage. Adjusted for inflation, the average K-12 ESP salary has fallen since 2011.
- Between 2009 and 2020, Virginia schools saw an increase in 60,000 students and lost 1,600 ESP positions.
- Virginia has already experienced statewide ESP staffing shortages due to poor compensation.
- According to a recent survey, over a quarter of paraprofessionals reported that they are likely to seek a job outside of education within the next year, 71% due to insufficient pay.
- The Virginia Association of School Superintendents estimate underfunding support staff has cost the state over 33,000 unrealized positions and $3.1 billion in unrealized revenue from 2010 to 2021.
Virginia Can Do More to Support ESPs
- State lawmakers should use the budget surplus to boost pay for ESPs substantially each budget cycle (at least 10%) until we get to competitive wages that stem the staffing shortages.
- State lawmakers can adequately support the needs of Virginia’s students by lifting the Great Recession era “Support Staff Cap” on the amount that the state will invest in ESPs.
- Create comprehensive collective bargaining agreements at the local level for education employees: ESPs in states with collective bargaining earn almost $6,000 a year more.
- Follow Washington state’s example and create a board for ESPs that sets requirements and policies for ESP professional development and advancement.
Collective bargaining allows educators to negotiate with school divisions for better working conditions for all school employees, better learning conditions for all students, and advocate for a stronger public education system.
Why Collective Bargaining Matters
- Collective bargaining is the process by which educators can negotiate wages, hours, and working conditions with the school division.
- Research shows teacher bargaining improves student test scores across all income levels.
- When educators have a safe and adequately resourced working environment, they can focus more time and energy on educating students.
- Teachers want what all families want for their schools: smaller class sizes, more school programs, better technology, and more support staff to give students the best educational experience.
- Collective bargaining helps all school staff, not just teachers: food service workers, counselors, nurses, librarians, office staff, and custodians all see conditions improve when staff can bargain.
- Collective bargaining supports the upward mobility of women and people of color, and unions provide democratic forms of problem-solving and decision-making that improve staff retention.
- Teacher unions “Bargain for the Common Good” and use their collective power to advocate for a better school environment for everyone.
- Research from the Economic Policy Institute finds collective bargaining narrows the pay gap between similarly educated public and private sector workers.
- Students in schools with active unions do better on college admissions tests like the SAT and ACT.
- Presence of active teachers’ unions improves math and English scores for Hispanic and Black students. Teachers are closest to the ground and know best what students need to succeed.
- Research finds that placing restrictions on teacher collective bargaining decreases teacher compensation by 6%, making it harder to attract and retain quality teachers.
- Based on data from the 2017-2018 National Teacher and Principal Survey, educators in states where collective bargaining is limited or prohibited reported a 6% higher pupil/staff ratio and had a larger share of respondents say they would leave their current job immediately for a higher paying job if possible. Bargaining creates better conditions for all staff and students.
- Policies that restrict collective bargaining hurt students. An analysis of Wisconsin’s 2011 “Budget Repair Bill,” which cut collective bargaining in the state, resulted in a drop in student achievement, lower teacher salaries, and higher teacher turnover.
- Collective bargaining increases the number of critical support staff and the amount of time children can spend in enriching environments like recess, art, and music classes. Virginia schools are still down thousands of support staff positions due to cuts made during the Great Recession and collective bargaining is one of the best avenues to restore these critical positions.
- Collective bargaining prevents teacher burnout, one of the most common reasons for the overwhelming rates of early teacher resignations (44% of teachers leave the field within five years).
- Highly unionized divisions dismiss more low-quality teachers and retain more high-quality teachers.
Virginia: One of the Worst States for Teacher Pay, Contributing to Shortages
- In Virginia, teachers make 32.7% less than other comparable college-educated workers. This gap is the 3rd worst in the nation and contributes to major staffing shortages.
- Due to the teacher wage gap, anti-union states have higher rates of high-quality teacher loss to non-teaching fields.
- Virginia is already experiencing severe K-12 staffing shortages, primarily in divisions where students face more barriers. This shortage is likely to get much worse without intervention.
Virginia Is Out of Step With Other States On Collective Bargaining
- Virginia should join the 44 states in the country that negotiate with their educators and pass a robust collective bargaining law allowing all public sector workers to bargain their contracts collectively. Until then, school boards and councils should approve collective bargaining ordinances as they arise to:
- Allow unions to represent all types of education employees without arbitrary position restrictions.
- Guarantee the right to join and participate in collective action without fear of retribution or coercion.
- Provide access for employees to bargain for adequate wages, working conditions, and terms of employment.
- Create open and transparent processes that let unions communicate with their membership during the bargaining and orientation process.
- Start benefiting from the improved staff retention and student achievement that collective bargaining is shown to bring.
