West Virginia is not the only place where teacher raises are being debated. Lawmakers in Richmond are divided about whether or not they can afford to pay teachers more.
Freshman Delegate Cheryl Turpin is not just a Democrat representing Virginia Beach. She’s also an AP environmental science teacher at Frank W. Cox High School. So she says she was thrilled to vote for a budget that has a two-percent raise for teachers.
“So some of the issue that caused us to go into education because we have a guaranteed retirement, and that’s a much different story today. So these two percent raises help individuals, maybe it goes into health care or maybe it will go into retirement."
But that was on the House side. The Senate budget does not include teacher raises.
“Well we like teachers.”
That’s Senator Steve Newman, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. He says the Senate has been generous to teachers in recent years, more so than the House or the governor. But this year it wasn’t possible.
“Clearly this year we were not able to give the state employees the raise, and we always treat those two the same.”
So the teacher raises are in the House budget but not in the Senate budget. That means they will be debated in a conference committee that will be dominated about whether to expand Medicaid to 400,000 people who live in poverty or with disabilities, then use the extra revenue that comes with that to help teachers.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
