Lawmakers are still deadlocked over budget amendments for a fiscal year that started on July 1st. And schools may be taking a hit because of the impasse.
The cost of doing nothing is about to hit some of the poorest school divisions in Virginia. That’s according to numbers from the Virginia Education Association, which says places like Emporia, Franklin City, Martinsville and Buena Vista; they'll all be hit with the highest cost-per-pupil if the General Assembly fails to amend the budget and fix a math error at the Department of Education discovered earlier this year. Emporia, for example, will be out more than $300 per student.
Chad Stewart at the VEA says that makes planning for the future difficult.
"Hires at the local school level, and staffing and fixes to different systems; when you’re assuming that your budget might be millions of dollars larger over the two years, you spend differently," Stewart says.
Now school divisions are trying to do more with less. Laura Goren at the Commonwealth Institute says a stopgap measure passed earlier this year did not fix the problem.
"They put in this little $16.8 million towards fixing the $201 million hole created by the state's calculation error," Goren explains.
That means if members of the General Assembly fail to pass budget amendments, school divisions across will be out about $180 million. That’s an average of $152 less for each student in Virginia.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
