Mayor Levar M. Stoney
contributed as a guest columnist for The Virginian-Pilot on October 21, 2018.
He asks residents from across Virginia to join him in the March For More on
December 8 from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School to Capitol Square. The mayor’s
column is reprinted below:
Virginia’s approach to education funding is failing its
children. Old buildings, staffing cuts, stagnant salaries, outdated technology
and dwindling school supplies are just a few of the issues plaguing the
learning environments for students across the commonwealth. When we fail to
take action to address the needs of our children, we compromise their futures,
and ours.
As recently reported in The Pilot, Hampton Roads schools are
struggling with similar issues to the ones we are facing in Richmond. Many of
our school buildings are well beyond their lifespan and are literally
crumbling. They are no longer the safe, healthy environments our students need
to thrive. But these facilities are just one part of the education crisis
facing us today — our entire K-12 education system is woefully
underfunded.
While the impact is felt directly by the students, the root
cause rests with the commonwealth of Virginia. For too long, the leaders of the
Virginia General Assembly have failed to acknowledge the true cost of educating
our children — ignoring the price of technology upgrades, transportation,
debt service on new schools, broadband service, the need for additional school
nurses, school psychologists, counselors and principals, and other essential
components of a 21st century education.
Instead, they have established their own calculation of
educating students, called the Standards of Quality, which fails to account for
these costs. Even by the state’s own calculation of the SOQ, the State Board of
Education estimates that the Virginia General Assembly is shortchanging public
schools by nearly $600 million per year, putting even more pressure on local
governments to fill the gaps.
In 2009, when the recession hit, state funding for education
dropped significantly. However, we are nine years into a robust economic
recovery, and the state funding level for K-12 education has not even returned
to pre-recession levels. Since 2009, state funding for K-12 education funding
is down 9 percent, while overall student population has grown by 5 percent. In
Richmond, the numbers are even more discouraging; state funding is down 19
percent, while our student population has grown by 9 percent.
It’s the same story in Hampton Roads, where I attended Tabb
High School in Yorktown and was the first in my family to attend college. The
state funding for Norfolk, Hampton and Virginia Beach city public schools has
fallen sharply per student, down anywhere from 13 percent to 18 percent since
2009. The inadequate funding that the commonwealth provides is not just taking
a toll on urban school districts. In fact, these same challenges are faced by
rural school districts and a growing number of suburban school districts, where
there has been an increase in poverty and new Americans.
As the state does less, localities are doing more for
education. Collectively, Virginia localities invested $4 billion above the
required local share for SOQ programs in 2016-17 alone. While most localities
are increasing their contributions to K-12 education, the commonwealth is not
fulfilling its obligation under the Virginia Constitution to ensure that an
educational system of high quality is established and maintained.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the state’s formula
for funding economically disadvantaged students, a program called the
"at-risk add-on." Virginia ranks among the lowest in the country in
providing additional funding for educating students from low-income families. I
grew up as one of those students, on free and reduced lunch and unable to
afford the deposits that would have allowed me to take my school books home.
Failing to provide for the most vulnerable among us today is not just
unacceptable, it is immoral.
Localities such as Richmond, Norfolk, Virginia Beach and the
school districts across the commonwealth — from Lee County to Accomack,
from Page to Halifax — must unite. We must call upon the members of the
Virginia General Assembly this January to live up to their obligations by
taking action to fully fund the $594 million gap in the Standards of Quality
and then determine and fund the true costs of K-12 education that the SOQs do
not cover.
More funding for better schools will lead to stronger
students. It is an investment in our future we need to make now.
It is a promise to our
children that we must keep.-->
