Hoo, boy! Governor Ralph Northam has added another priority to his list of new spending initiatives: $1.2 billion in the next two-year budget for extra K-12 schools.
About two-thirds of that sum will go to “rebenchmarking” the state’s Standards of Quality (SOQs), or required inputs into public schools. Another $145 million will boost teacher pay by 3%, $140 million will be distributed to school districts serving large shares of low-income students, $125 million will go to “flexible funding” for school districts, “$99 million will increase the number of school counselors, and smaller sums will provide for for English-as-a-Second-Language students and school meals for low-income students, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Northam’s plan falls short of what the Virginia Board of Education had asked for, which would have amounted to $2 billion in extra spending, said the RTD. But the $1.2 billion proposal is massive by any other measure. It also follows new spending initiatives for Virginia’s historically black public universities, maternal health, early education, low-income housing, free community college tuition, and environmental quality.
Bacon’s bottom line: Some increase spending on K-12 and other priorities is justified in a two-year budget that expects to see healthy revenue increases. Hopefully, the governor plans to set aside additional moneys to build up the state’s rainy-day fund and financial reserves. Likewise, it would be advisable to accelerate payments into the Virginia Retirement System to whittle down the massive unfunded liabilities festering there. We’ll know more about that when he unveils the full budget later today.
In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how much the governor proposes to invest in economic development, job creation, and growth of the tax base. So far, he has publicized social justice-style spending initiatives. Other than making good on promises to Amazon for locating its HQ2 project in Arlington, it doesn’t look like what you’d call a growth-and-prosperity agenda. But we’ll wait and see what the budget proposal includes.
— JAB
