The Virginia House Education Committee, which has a 12-10 Republican majority, voted 11-11 to not report House Bill 496 from Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, to the full House of Delegates. Del. Gordon Helsel, R-Hampton, was the lone Republican to vote against the bill. The measure failed on the tie vote.

Helsel said after the meeting that he voted against it because he’d heard from his local school districts, which said they opposed the bill.

The expansion of the definition of a qualified higher education expense allows you to use up to $10,000 per year, per child of a 529 account for tuition at any public, private or religious school.

North Cross and Roanoke Catholic are both excited about the changes.

We talked to the CEO of the Virginia 529 plan Mary Morris who says there are still questions and these changes came as a shock.

Morris says the 529 can only pay for tuition not school supplies

Advertising on school buses? House Education committee approves bill to do just that
Richmond Times-Dispatch
January 29, 2018

A creative way to improve school funding has made it out of committee.

The House Education Committee approved House Bill 809 from Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Bristol, that would allow state school systems to sell commercial advertising on their buses as schools continue to struggle with funding. The committee voted 18-2 in favor of the bill.

Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, was one of two opponents and said he voted no because of the long-term implications.

“This is a short-term Band-Aid,” said VanValkenburg, a government teacher in Henrico County. “It kind of lets us off the hook in terms of our constitutional responsibility to fund our schools.”

“Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South,” a report released Tuesday, found that student achievement has increased significantly overall in the South in the past several decades. But the report found that Southern states must deal with historic inequities in education – student performance varies widely by race and income – that hold back many parts of the region.

What causes a teacher shortage?
There are a variety of factors that influence teacher shortages. Attrition, broadly defined, is teachers leaving the field. Some attrition such as teachers changing schools and retirements are normal and expected.

Teachers leave the profession for a variety of reasons including teacher pay and rising costs of education. The National Education Association (NEA) issued a report in May ranking Virginia 32nd in the country for teacher pay, about $8K lower than the national average. National Public Radio (NPR) recently issued the results of its first Teacher Student Debt survey of over 2000 teachers. 250 teachers responded that they had more than $75K in debt and of that 250, 62% reported being terrified of that debt.

As fields like math, science, and technology continue to grow, demand for teachers in those fields increases and often, the demand is unable to be met. National enrollment in teacher preparation programs has decreased by 30% over the past decade and statistics from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia show similar trends here in Virginia.

A link to an article from Washington Post about Teacher Attrition can be found here.

Do certain fields have more critical shortages than others?
Yes. Each year in Virginia, the Virginia Department of Education reports on critical teaching shortages in adherence to the requirements of the Appropriations Act. This information has remained consistent for the past five years, with Special Education, Elementary Education, and Middle Education landing in the top 3 every year. There are also severe shortages in mathematics, career and technical education, foreign language, English as a second language, and English. Link to the 2017-2018 report can be found here.

Virginia also has a shortage of minority teachers. In Virginia, approximately 49% of the student population is minority. However, the minority teaching population is 20% based on numbers released by the Virginia Department of Education.

What work has been done in the Commonwealth to address shortages?
The 2015 Virginia General Assembly passed House Joint Resolution 558 requesting that VDOE and SCHEV examine teacher shortages in the Commonwealth and compile a list of resources and recommended strategies for addressing the issue. The document included information on programs that specifically train and develop teachers for school systems across the state as well as background information on shortages.

In 2016, during the McAuliffe administration, the Secretary of Education and the Department of Education partnered together to form the Taskforce on Diversifying Virginia’s Teacher Educator Pipeline. The group represented a broad range geographically and racially. The workgroup met over the course of nine months where they received information on teaching shortages nationally and at the state level. The group worked to determine the barriers and develop recommendations to diversify the teaching workforces. The final report of the committee can be found here.

Governor McAuliffe convened a statewide Advisory Committee on Teacher Shortages (ACTS) in May 2017. The committee, chaired by Dr. Billy K. Cannaday, Jr. and Mr. G. Gilmer Minor III, represented a cross-section of K-12 education, higher education, policy, and business. Preliminary recommendations were released in October 2017.

In December 2017, Governor McAuliffe signed Executive Directive 14 which directs the Board of Education to issue emergency regulations to provide Virginia’s colleges and universities the option to offer an undergraduate major in teaching. Currently, programs may offer graduate degrees in education, but state regulations do not permit for undergraduate majors in teaching.

Newly elected Governor Northam has promised to continue addressing teacher shortages by proposing several budget actions that directly affect shortages.

• New funding ($1.1 million over the biennium) to automate the teacher licensure process, which is currently paper-based and burdensome for both teachers and Virginia Department of Education staff.
• New funding ($1 million over the biennium) to support the recruitment and retention of principals in Virginia’s most challenged school divisions. Principal leadership is critical to the success of challenged schools and has a direct impact on the ability to attract and retain our best and brightest teachers.
• An increase in the Tuition Assistance Grant (TAG) program ($225,000 in FY2020) to encourage students attending Virginia’s private colleges and universities to enter into the teaching profession. Seniors pursuing degrees in education will receive an additional $500 increase in their TAG award amount; and,
• New funding ($100,000 over biennium) to help cover the cost of tests and test-preparation programs for provisionally licensed minority students who pass those exams at disproportionately lower rates than their peers. This funding impacts one of the barriers affecting Virginia’s shortage of teachers of color.
• Revised budget language to improve the Virginia Teaching Scholarship Loan Program to better incentivize teachers to fill vacancies in the places where they are needed the most. Students will be eligible for up to $20,000 if they teach for two years in a top five critical shortage area, in a division with 50% free and reduced lunch student population.