Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 23, 1993 TAG: 9304230261
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But state legislators can raise their grades with the help of a crib sheet prepared by the Virginia Education Association, President Robley Jones said at the start of the group's annual conference.
During a news conference at the Roanoke Civic Center, Jones unveiled a three-tiered plan that he said would help erase educational disparities and provide more state money for all of Virginia's students.
The VEA plan would scrap the state formula for divvying up money to local school divisions, a formula Jones said "deliberately misrepresents" average teachers' salaries and fails to cover students' basic needs.
The preliminary report includes no price tag and no breakdown for how the new formula would affect each of the state's 134 school divisions. Those figures will be available in a final report to be issued during the first week in June, Jones said.
The proposal was the first time the VEA has called for wholesale replacement of the state's school-spending formula, he said. Jones is hoping the state Board of Education will consider its suggestions as it prepares its budget for the 1994-96 biennium.
That's not likely to happen, said Edward Carr, deputy superintendent for administration at the Virginia Department of Education.
Carr said the state likely won't change the way it allocates money to school districts until a lawsuit, pending before the Virginia Supreme Court, is settled.
The suit - brought by a coalition of the state's poorest school districts - charges that the state violated its constitution by failing to provide equal funding for all school divisions.
In the 1990-91 school year, the last year for which figures were available, per-pupil spending in Virginia ranged from $3,807 in Appomattox County to $8,724 in Falls Church.
As for whether the formula realistically calculates teachers' salaries - which soak up most of the state's education budget - that's not an issue into which Carr intends to look.
A 1987 legislative study concluded "that the current system, with some minor modifications, was still the best system to continue," he said.
But that system covers fewer teachers than local school divisions actually need, Jones said. According to the VEA report, the state failed to pay for 13 percent of the state's teachers this year because the formula calls for 9.5 fewer teachers per 1,000 students than local school divisions actually hire.
The VEA formula would count those teachers (70.1 per 1,000 students) and also would count students differently, said Richard Salmon, a Virginia Tech professor of school finance hired as a consultant by the VEA.
The first tier of the plan, which would provide state money for the basic educational needs of all students, would use a different weighting system for special-education students, who require smaller classes, Salmon said.
The second tier would provide a mix of state and local money for school districts willing to spend local tax money to go beyond the basic needs.
The third tier would be purely optional for localities that still wish to spend more, Salmon said. It includes no state money.
The VEA report also chastised the state for letting teachers' salaries drop from 18th to 27th in the nation during the past three years, leaving them nearly $3,000 short of the national average of $35,334.
"Virginia is developing a reputation as being a comparatively poor place to teach," Jones said.
This may be the year to change that, he said.
Jones said he's purposefully raising these issues during an election year in the hopes of pushing them into the political arena, "so that we can make doing right by Virginia's children a key part of campaign debate."
Virginians will vote this year for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as all 100 members of the House of Delegates. The VEA will release tonight the names of candidates it will endorse.
by CNB