Virginia schools will be able to hire more support staff positions, something educators say is desperately needed amid a continued teacher shortage.

State lawmakers last month approved an amended budget that will direct $152 million toward these school support positions. The appropriations help boost the ratio of allotted support staff per teacher. The funding ratio increased from 21 support positions per 1,000 pupils to 24 per 1,000 pupils — though the older standard was 26 support positions, according to a July report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

This funding has been capped for over a decade, following a $3.7 billion shortfall in the Great Recession-era budget that was never adjusted. The cap reduction resulted in a $331 million reduction in state education funding last year, according to JLARC.

Some positions limited by the cap include administrative, clerical, and operations staff, as well as technology and instructional professionals, according to the Virginia Association of School Superintendents website. Many education groups say the cap has resulted in the loss of thousands of support staff, even as enrollment grew.

The state’s Standards of Quality provide the foundation for public education, including minimum staffing needs. The standards typically under-calculate how much staff is actually needed, according to JLARC. Elimination of the support cap was a near-term recommendation in the report.

Virginia school divisions receive less K–12 funding per student than the national average, according to JLARC. Other states receive just under $2,000 more per student.

Chad Stewart, the Virginia Education Association’s policy analyst, said this cap was supposed to be temporary.

“An entire generation of kids have gone through their K-12 experience in the state of Virginia with far less support staff for helping their schools function and making sure that teachers weren’t overwhelmed with all these additional duties and could focus on teaching,” Stewart said.

When there is an inadequate amount of support staff in schools, teachers or other support staff have to fill multiple positions, according to Stewart.

“It takes them [teachers] away from the duties they’re trained to do, which is supporting students in different ways,” Stewart said.

Guidance counselors, in particular, have fulfilled multiple support positions, such as monitoring cafeterias or clerical work in the office, according to Stewart. A law took effect July 1 to ensure counselors spend at least 80% of their time doing direct counseling of students.

Teacher Karl Knoche has worked at Virginia Beach City Public Schools since 2007. He has taught government and economics at First Colonial High School since 2014.

“All the support staff at my school does a great job of helping teachers and students, and I feel that I can go to them with any problems,” Knoche stated in an email.

Knoche has extra duties such as monitoring students between classes, during lunch, and before school, which can be “time-consuming,” he stated.

Teachers seem to have more responsibilities outside of the classroom than when he first started teaching, according to Knoche.

“We have been fortunate at my school to be fairly well staffed,” Knoche stated. “We have had issues with having enough custodians, but that isn’t due to the lack of jobs, but the lack of interest in the jobs.”

Virginia leaders have grappled with teaching vacancies in recent years. The General Assembly committed to increasing compensation with 5% pay increases over three consecutive fiscal years starting in 2022, according to JLARC.

However, the pay increases may not address low or no compensation in previous years, coupled with inflation the past two years, the report stated. Additionally, not every school division could fund the full 5% increase because their locality does not provide enough matching funds “for employees not recognized through the SOQ formula.”

Virginia ranks No. 22 for teacher pay, which is an average salary of about $61,000, according to the National Education Association.

The state had over 3,500 unfilled teaching positions in the 2022-23 school year. Elementary school teachers accounted for the most vacancies, followed by special education, according to data from the Virginia Department of Education. Special education positions at 5.8% had the highest percentage of unfilled positions, followed by world language and then elementary school teachers.

The VDOE announced a strategic plan in 2022 to improve teacher recruitment and retention. The goals are to make it easier for qualified teachers to be hired, consider more candidates eligible to fulfill open positions, and reinforce strategies that maintain a thriving workplace, such as programs focused on teacher retention.

The use of appropriated funds will vary by district, but the intent is that local school divisions will use funds for support staff positions, according to a VDOE email response.

The governor and lawmakers have removed close to “three-quarters of the support positions cap” in the past two sessions, the VDOE stated.

By Alyssa Hutton
Capital News Service

Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.

Share the News:

Governor Youngkin introduced Chronic Absenteeism Task Force as part of a broader initiative.

As the Commonwealth of Virginia faces alarming student absenteeism rates, Governor Glenn Youngkin announced the creation of the Chronic Absenteeism Task Force, an essential component of the comprehensive ALL IN VA initiative. This ambitious program seeks to bolster learning recovery, focusing on Attendance, Literacy, and Learning.

A striking outcome of the extended school closures due to the pandemic is the near doubling of chronic absenteeism rates in Virginia classrooms. This concerning trend has sparked the formation of the task force, which will equip school divisions with resources and action plans to tackle these unprecedented absenteeism rates.

Governor Youngkin remarked on the residual effects of the pandemic, “Children must be in school to have any chance of recovering from the persistent learning loss… Our new Chronic Absenteeism Task Force was designed to get kids back in the classroom and back on track now.”

Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera shared alarming statistics, highlighting that “nearly one in five students in Virginia are missing more than 10% of the school year.” She added that there’s a clear correlation between chronic absenteeism and academic performance, with those absent regularly trailing by 25% in math and 18% in reading.

Virginia’s Department of Education has been proactive, recently concluding a two-week listening tour across all eight Superintendent Regions. The aim was to share details of the ALL IN VA plan with educational leaders.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons stressed the significance of regular school attendance, noting the clear message from superintendents: “Kids need to be in school.”

The Task Force will convene bi-weekly, delving into the root causes of chronic absenteeism, such as food scarcity, health and safety concerns, and transportation barriers. An essential aspect of their strategy is parental responsibility, focusing on tailored actions that address each school division’s primary obstacles to reducing absenteeism.

Following their sessions, practical solutions will be shared widely, ensuring immediate implementation and raising public awareness. Dr. Keith Perrigan, a prominent member of the task force, expressed his commitment to developing strategies that will provide ongoing support to families and students.

However, the initiative doesn’t stop at attendance. The ALL IN VA plan also encompasses strategies for accelerating literacy through Grade 8 and investing in intensive statewide tutoring initiatives. This holistic approach ensures that once students are back in classrooms, they receive the essential academic support they need.

The repercussions of the pandemic on Virginia’s education system are evident, but Governor Youngkin’s administration is determined to navigate this challenge head-on. Through the ALL IN VA initiative, and specifically the Chronic Absenteeism Task Force, the Commonwealth seeks to ensure students not only return to school but also regain lost academic ground.

Click here to read Governor Youngkin’s ALL IN VA plan. 

Click here to access the Department’s ALL IN tutoring and resource page. 

Click here to read Virginia’s 2022-2023 Standard of Learning scores. 

Click here to view the ALL IN VA 2023 Annual Standards of Learning Assessment Rates Presentation. 

Share the News:

The White House is warning that a partial government shutdown would mean 1.3 million active-duty armed services members must keep working without receiving paychecks, and hundreds of thousands of Pentagon employees would face furloughs.

by Ashley Murray, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

Share the News:

Virginia’s so-called “sore loser” law is supposed to ensure that when a candidate is defeated in a Republican or Democratic primary, they can’t drop their party affiliation and appear on the general election ballot next to the person who beat them.

As the state’s closely watched election season, which will determine control of all 140 seats in the General Assembly, ramps up, the letter and spirit of that law are being tested. A handful of unsuccessful primary candidates have tried to keep their campaigns alive after defeat while attacking their own parties for allegedly corrupting the process.

Makya Little, a Northern Virginia House of Delegates candidate who narrowly lost a Democratic primary in June, went as far as filing a lawsuit that seeks to have her primary loss overturned. The suit, which has not yet been resolved in Richmond City Circuit Court, also seeks to have Little’s name appear on ballots as an independent candidate despite the fact that she, like all primary candidates, signed a form acknowledging her name couldn’t be on the ballot if she lost her primary.

In occasionally blunt language, attorneys representing state election officials argued Little’s case should be thrown out because she and her supporters are “trying to convert their disappointment into a lawsuit.”

“This case is about an attempt by a defeated politician to overturn the results of an election,” wrote the state’s attorneys.

The state is also seeking to add Rozia Henson — the Democrat who defeated Little in the primary by just 49 votes — as a party to the lawsuit, saying the case has ramifications for him as the primary winner. Henson is the only candidate on the ballot in the heavily Democratic 19th House District, made up of parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties.

In an interview, Little acknowledged her attempts to appear on the ballot failed since the ballots were printed weeks ago, and early voting got underway last Friday. However, she said she intends to continue the lawsuit and keep arguing the state needs a better mechanism to resolve disputes over whether primaries were conducted fairly. Little now identifies as an independent but said she still supports many Democratic priorities.

“It’s disappointing that the party of inclusion can be so exclusionary,” Little said. “And what they call vetting is actually gatekeeping.”

Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, one of Virginia’s most prominent purveyors of unfounded election fraud claims, explored the idea of running a write-in campaign after losing a suburban Richmond primary battle against former state Sen. Glen Sturtevant. Chase told supporters in a Sept. 13 email she was dropping that plan because write-in campaigns involve “far too much work with little return.” She also floated the possibility of a statewide campaign next year without identifying a specific office.

In a more politically significant development, Matt Strickland, an anti-establishment conservative who sought the GOP nomination in a Fredericksburg-area Virginia Senate district, is encouraging supporters to write his name on their November ballots despite losing a June primary to Del. Tara Durant, R-Fredericksburg.

Durant is facing Democrat Joel Griffin and independent Monica Gary in a battleground district being heavily contested by both parties, and the prospect of Strickland drawing conservative votes away from Durant adds another complication for Republicans hoping to win full control of the legislature. Democrats currently have a 22-18 majority in the Senate.

“The only way that the Republican Party will change is we withhold our vote from them for winning these primaries via corruption,” said Strickland, who also accused Gov. Glenn Youngkin of supporting a “globalist agenda.” Youngkin endorsed Durant in the primary.

Republicans have downplayed Strickland’s impact on the race.

“I just don’t think there’s a whole lot of wind beneath their sails, so to speak,” Durant said Tuesday. “You take everything seriously, but you’ve got to focus on those who are on the ballot.”

Griffin, the Democrat who stands to benefit from a split GOP vote, took a different view of Strickland’s role as a potential spoiler.

“We’ve seen a number of voters who are frustrated with the lack of performance from Tara,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of people in the region that do support him.”

Virginia’s sore loser law only prohibits candidates from appearing on the ballot after losing a primary, but candidates can theoretically win if they can educate enough supporters about the need to look past the official list of candidates, fill in the write-in box, and spell the name (mostly) correctly. State Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, pulled off that feat in 2019 after paperwork errors left him off the ballot in his strongly Republican district, but he received a $500,000 donation from a Republican donor to fund the extraordinary outreach effort.

In court filings portraying Little’s lawsuit as legally meritless, attorneys for the state emphasized that Little could technically still win as a write-in candidate under Virginia’s system.

The sore loser law Little is targeting serves a valid democratic purpose, the state argued, by preventing party infighting, minimizing voter confusion, and ensuring that primary elections don’t become “meaningless.” Little’s allegations that various Democratic officials tilted the primary against her, the state’s filing contends, have nothing to do with official election functions and the laws that govern them.

Little has been claimed. Democratic leaders in Prince William and Fairfax counties manipulated the primary process by allowing party officials to be involved with other candidates’ campaigns, deleting her social media posts from party pages, canceling a “bilingual voter drive,” and steering endorsements to her opponent.

Little, who says she’s representing herself in the lawsuit because no lawyers would take the case, insisted her post-primary efforts are about standing up for the voters in her district.

“It’s bigger than just my campaign. It’s bigger than just this one race. It’s bigger than just this one election cycle,” she said. “This has become a pattern and practice of the parties to control who has access to the ballot.”

The 2023 primary season has also drawn attention to a possible loophole in the sore loser law.

In a local race in Roanoke County, a candidate dropped out of a Republican contest just days before the June 20 primaries but then filed to run as an independent. That candidate, Tom McCracken, also abandoned his independent run last month, according to WDBJ7.

In a Sept. 14 advisory opinion on a hypothetical scenario that matches what happened in Roanoke County, Attorney General Jason Miyares said that, as written, the law allows primary candidates to avoid triggering the sore loser restriction by dropping out of a primary at the last minute. Even if it occurs after voting has started with the candidate’s name printed on primary ballots, a formal withdrawal from the race doesn’t count as being “defeated” in the primary, Miyares wrote.

Theoretically, Miyares opined, a primary candidate could evade the sore loser law by dropping out “at any point prior to the closing of the polls on the day of the primary election.”

Staff reporter Charlie Paullin contributed to this report.

Share the News:

RICHMOND, Va. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently issued an executive directive that emphasized the looming impact of artificial intelligence, though higher education is only beginning to grapple with how to utilize AI.

Youngkin’s order is to ensure AI is used responsibly, ethically, and transparently in state government, job creation, and education.

A survey released earlier this year found that 60% of college students polled have not been taught how to use AI tools ethically or responsibly by higher education instructors. The same percentage of students also think AI tools will become the new normal, according to the BestColleges survey.

A U.S. Department of Education policy report published in May stated support for using AI to improve teaching and learning. The department stated the need to develop clear policy for AI use and that the anticipated risks and unintended consequences must be addressed.

ChatGPT was released to the public less than a year ago. The chatbot uses language models to mimic human writing and dialogue. It can respond to questions and generate various written content, including emails, prompts, and articles. The chatbot is a form of generative AI that can also create images, videos, songs, and code.

Educators at every level are now faced with how to appropriately address the new technology.

Like many universities, Virginia Commonwealth University faculty and staff continue to discuss AI’s role and how to guide professors moving forward, according to Mangala Subramaniam, the university’s senior vice provost of faculty affairs.

VCU will solicit feedback from faculty on Sept. 26 to learn how AI has impacted their classrooms. The university will create an advisory council of faculty who are familiar with AI and who can provide updated guidance for professors.

Faculty at VCU are either fearful of the technology or they’re willing to experiment with it, according to Subramaniam.

The university held two forums earlier this year focused on the potential challenges and opportunities of AI, including ChatGPT. Professors have the freedom to decide if they want to use AI in their classroom and are advised to make expectations clear in the syllabus about its use, according to Subramaniam.

Educators may face problems with AI, including plagiarism and how to detect if a student uses AI. Students may face uncertainty about acceptable and allowed use. VCU describes AI plagiarism and copyright as a “difficult topic” and advises that it should be made clear to students they will be punished if they submit AI-generated work as original content, according to the VCU learning tool guide.

Educators and businesses need clear ways to detect AI-generated work, which has driven an industry response.

The software Turnitin allows educators to detect originality and plagiarism. It can now detect 97% of ChatGPT and GPT3 writing, according to its website.

VerifiedHuman is a relatively new company that seeks to differentiate human-made media from AI-generated media, according to its founder, Micah Voraritskul.

VerifiedHuman is conducting a study where the company will collect a thousand writing samples from college and high school students across the globe to see what is written by a human, written by AI, or put through an AI scrubber, according to Voraritskul. A scrubber is intended to modify AI-generated text and make it appear more human.

“I think what we’re trying to do is help institutions of higher learning have some kind of policy,” Voraritskul said.

Teachers are nervous about AI because their job is to assess student learning, he said.

“It’s hard to assess student learning … if 90% of assessment is done in writing and you can’t determine whether or not the student wrote that, you don’t know what the student has actually learned,” Voraritskul said.

Student and faculty reaction to AI use depends on the assignment, the outcome, and the standards of learning. Arielle Andrews is a VCU interdisciplinary studies student with a focus on media studies, sociology, and creative writing. She is a contributing writer for the independent student newspaper, The Commonwealth Times.

“I think the best thing to do for students is instead of teaching them to fear, or like have a disdain for AI, is to more teach them how to work alongside it and use it ethically,” Andrews said.

AI can be a beneficial tool and better used for things that are not “super impactful to the learning process,” Andrews said.

“If an assignment can easily be completed by AI, then it’s not testing those human traits of writing that it should,” Andrews said.

Voraritskul is “pro AI.” The tools can help students do better work in the future, he said. However, he sees the potential danger of AI’s influence on critical thinking and understanding difficult concepts.

“When teachers are asking students to figure hard things out, they want them to use their brains,” Voraritskul said. “They want them to exercise their brain muscle so they can figure out what’s going on in this problem.”

Although the BestColleges survey found students were concerned about AI’s impact on their education, more students were concerned about the impact of AI on society at large.

Voraritskul recalled that math teachers all over the world were concerned students would not learn how to add or subtract when Texas Instruments mass-produced the first affordable calculators.

“Well, that wasn’t true,” Voraritskul said. “And what are you going to do? Stop the calculator? Stop the computer? Stop the internet? Stop AI? No, you can’t. You have to adjust.”

By Nicole Staab
Capital News Service

Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.

Share the News:

Following criticism by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, Virginia’s Department of Education will begin to develop a new system for tracking public schools’ and students’ performance.

A June report from Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera and Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons to the General Assembly noted that most states have both an accreditation system, which assesses whether schools are meeting all requirements laid out in state laws and regulations, and an accountability system, which provides “timely and transparent information on student and school performance.”

President Grace Creasey listening to a presentation at the Board of Education’s business meeting on Sept. 14, 2023. (Nathaniel Cline/Virginia Mercury)

“Virginia’s current accreditation system combines these two systems into one system as a single accreditation system, limiting transparency into how schools maintain compliance and recognize student achievement independent of each other,” the report found. It went on to recommend that Virginia develop “a distinct, stand-alone accountability system” that provides information about how each K-12 school is preparing students.

Virginia’s current system focuses on accreditation and measures schools based on not only academic achievement, performance gaps, student attendance, and graduation and dropout rates but also factors like building safety, student-teacher ratios, and licensure. Schools are then labeled “accredited,” “accredited with conditions,” or not accredited.

The Virginia Department of Education has said the current system is unclear and should be revised to address recent declines in student performance in core subjects such as math and reading.

“This is an important move to show transparently how schools are growing children, how they’re meeting achievement measures, and how they’re readying kids for the future,” said Coons.

On Thursday, the Board of Education voted to direct the department to develop two different measures to track academic performance: an achievement index and an overall school rating.

The index measure would provide a picture of a school’s achievement level based on students’ performance on assessments, with different levels of performance, like basic, proficient, or advanced, receiving different weights.

Scott Brabrand, executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, said Thursday the index “allows schools to count the achievement of every child, and it also allows teachers to focus on every child in their classroom, not just focusing on those on the bubble for proficiency.”

The former John B. Cary Elementary School in Richmond was renamed Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary School in 2023. (Mechelle Hankerson/Virginia Mercury)

A second or “summative” measure would provide a school rating based on nine factors that would include not only student performance but also graduation completion and dropout rates. That metric would be similar to those used in states like North Carolina and Maryland and could take the form of A-F grades, stars, or another ranking.

While the superintendent’s association is also supporting the summative measure, the Virginia School Boards Association expressed concern that it could negatively impact a school division’s ability to recruit teachers or obtain needed resources.

“Whether it is at A-F, a series of stars or descriptive labels, VSBA is concerned that unless the rating system is used to drive resources and supports students and schools in challenging environments, the label will do more harm to schools and increase the likelihood of a school not making needed strides and academic achievement,” said JoWanda Rollins-Fells, a member of the group’s board.

Board member Anne Holton, an appointee of Gov. Terry McAuliffe, said she needed more information about whether the summative measure would contribute to residential segregation before supporting the proposed accountability rating system. Some researchers have argued that poor school ratings increase the likelihood of parents moving their children to private or charter schools, leading to decreased funding a public school receives from the state.

“I think that would be an important factor for us to consider as we move forward,” Holton said.

Last fall, the previous board began reviewing the state’s current accountability system to address Virginia students’ declining scores on state and national assessments.

Since then, Youngkin, who has been vocal in his criticism of the state’s current accreditation system, has appointed three new board members. Currently, eight of its nine seats are filled with his appointees.

Board President Grace Creasey, one of Youngkin’s appointees, on Thursday, said the board had discussed accreditation and accountability for a year because of the “complexity” and “lack of transparency” of the state systems, which she said don’t effectively measure student performance.

“We’re really starting to put the skeleton of this project together in order to get to a very robust end goal, and so I’m very happy [with] the guardrails that we’ve created today to inform our work further as we move forward,” she said after the meeting.

Kimberly Bridges, an assistant professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the new approach to accountability “will be helpful to schools, teachers, leaders, students, as well as parents.”

Bridges, who served on the working group that helped craft the June recommendations, said she had hoped the board would have considered in more depth the degree to which achievement measures should prioritize proficiency or growth. The working group had urged the board to include both factors in any measures.

Creasey said growth measures may not be informative for parents, while proficiency measures would allow direct conversations about achievement between administrators, teachers, and parents.

On Thursday, the Virginia Association of School Superintendents and Virginia School Boards Association requested the board delay voting on any of the new accountability measures to give the public time to review the options.

Creasey, however, said the development process will last a year and allow public comment and stakeholder input opportunities.

“The process had to start somewhere,” she said.

An updated timeline calls for VDOE to collect data on the indicators included in the new accountability system from August 2024 to July 2025 and implement the system in August 2025. The board would vote again on the proposal next summer.

by Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

Share the News: