Dueling bills that would impact Standards of Quality-funded instructional and support positions are making their way through the General Assembly. HB 187 (Clark) and SB 104 (Lucas) as originally written both sought to codify a requirement that public school teachers be compensated at a minimum of, at, or above the national average teacher salary. In the bills’ original forms, this would impose quite a heavy financial cost to both state and local governments as indicated by the bills fiscal impact statements. Since then, both bills have been modified. Of course, budget language would supersede any language in code.
HB 187, which passed the House on a vote of 74-24 and has been referred to the Senate Education and Health Committee, now requires the Governor’s introduced budget bills for 2025, 2026, and 2027 to propose funding, and require state to provide the Commonwealth’s share of compensation supplement incentives for Standards of Quality-funded instructional and support positions sufficient to increase the average teacher salary in the Commonwealth to at least the national average teacher salary by the end of the 2026–2028 biennium. Furthermore, the minimum compensation supplement that shall be proposed in the Governor’s introduced budget bills and provided pursuant to the general appropriation act as described in § 1 of the bill shall be structured as follows: (i) such supplement for the 2025 session shall provide at least one-third of the increase required pursuant to § 1 for FY 2026, (ii) such supplement for the 2026 session shall provide at least one-half of the increase required pursuant to § 1 for FY 2027, and (iii) such supplement for the 2027 session shall provide the remaining increase required pursuant to § 1 for FY 2028.
Such a requirement would also impose a significant fiscal impact to state and local governments.
SB 104 was amended to keep the original aspirational language in § 22.1-289.1 of the Code of Virginia that maintains it is a goal of the Commonwealth to compensate teachers at or above the national average. The only change would be to require the Department of Education to conduct an annual, instead of biennial, review of the compensation of teachers and shall consider the Commonwealth’s compensation for teachers relative to the national average teacher salary. The bill with this language passed the Senate unanimously and was referred to the House Education Committee, which voted 14-8 to conform the bill to the language of HB 187 and report from the Committee.
VACo supports voluntary incentives that encourage localities to increase teacher salaries to reflect the national average in compensation if this is done without a required minimum local match. The state share of compensation for the base rate of salaries should reflect the actual average salary as determined by prevailing local practice.
VACo Contact: Jeremy R. Bennett