Virginia’s new $1.5 billion budget shortfall — and a potentially larger gap for the coming two years — has put education advocates on an early offensive in the hopes of preserving K-12 education funding and staff jobs.
Education, the state’s largest expenditure, is unlikely to escape the budget ax as fiscal woes squeeze once-sacred sectors of government.
Perhaps as a sign of the times, the Virginia Education Association, which rallied at the state Capitol on Wednesday, isn’t realistically hoping to keep K-12 funding untouched in the upcoming rounds of cuts. Instead, President Kitty Boitnott said, the group will fight to keep any changes to funding formulas from becoming permanent.
“I guess it would have to be a realistic response from us, that in light of these particular numbers we’re seeing, that there might have to be some hard choices made and some concessions made,” Boitnott said Thursday.
Gov. Tim Kaine a year ago proposed for the first time to cut education funding, which had been held harmless in prior years. Many of those cuts, which included laying off school support staff, would have been made were it not for a late infusion of stimulus money.
Virginia can expect a repeat when the legislature meets next year to consider not only the end of the fiscal 2010 budget, but also a two-year budget running to fiscal 2012.
“We’re going to have to revisit some of the issues with K-12,” Kaine told reporters Wednesday. “Obviously, I view that as the highest priority of state government, and that’s why we took so long to get around to them.
“And we will certainly have a lighter hand with K-12 than with other priorities,” the governor said. “But everything is under review.”
The battle lines are likely to form around capping funding for school support staff such as janitors, secretaries and nurses. A Virginia Department of Education report last month found that putting such a cap in place would save $754 million through fiscal 2012. Boitnott said the change would cost 14,400 employees their jobs.
