Session Checkup: Education

At VaOurWay, we believe every student, regardless of zip code, should have access to quality education and a safe learning environment. In the midst of a devastating pandemic, lawmakers have had little time (30 days) to deliberate a lot of bills (1500) - many related to education - during the Regular Session. With a special session currently underway providing a much-needed extension to the Regular Session, more work on critical education bills is expected.

Here are some of the major education bills we’ve been following this legislative cycle, and what you need to know about them:


Returning to In-Person Schooling - The prevailing priority of both chambers - and parties - is returning to in-person schooling as soon as possible, and Governor Ralph Northam (D) agrees. Nuance in achieving that goal, however, exists between the two chambers. 

 

  • PASSED IN SENATE

Republican Senator Siobhan Dunnavant’s single-sentence bill requiring each local school division make in-person and virtual learning available to all students by choice of the student's parent or guardian by at least July 1st. Its bipartisan passage was largely viewed as a symbolic gesture.

  • PASSED IN HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE

House Democrats’ unanimously-passed substitute of Senator Dunnavant’s bill, that would not only require public school districts to offer at least some access to in-person learning by the 2021-2022 school year but would also require all teachers and school staff have the chance to get a vaccine before the start of the next school year. The bill would also offer a fully virtual option for families who want one. If the substitute passes out of the full House, it will need to clear the Senate before arriving on the Governor’s desk.


Why it matters: 

  • The CDC has recently indicated that in-person schooling can resume safely with masks, social distancing, and other strategies, and stressed the importance of doing so as soon as possible. The CDC also noted that the vaccination of teachers, while important, is not a prerequisite for reopening. The CDC also emphasized in-person learning has not been linked to substantial coronavirus spread in U.S. communities.
  • Experts widely agree that classroom learning is more effective, and concerns have been mounting nationwide about students facing isolation, learning loss, food insecurity, and other problems due to virtual instruction.
  • Individual school districts currently still have the final say in how they operate, with some public and private schools offering in-person learning while others offer only virtual school. Governor Northam issued a directive earlier this month that all schools in the state should make in-person instruction available at least as an option by March 15.



School Modernization and Repair - Both sides of the aisle acknowledge the exigency of upgrading and maintaining safe learning environments, but House Democrats differ on the funding question, endangering any serious legislative efforts and drawing the sharp ire of Southwest Virginia.


  • LEFT IN HOUSE COMMITTEE

Delegate Israel O’Quinn’s bill to establish a School Construction Fund whose sole purpose would be to provide grants to cover school construction costs to eligible school boards. It passed out of the House Education Committee with broad bipartisan support but failed to receive a hearing in the House Appropriations Committee.

  • PASSED IN SENATE

Senator Bill Stanley’s bill to provide a statewide referendum on the question of whether the legislature shall issue bonds worth $3 billion for the purpose of funding K-12 school building construction, repair, and other capital projects related to the modernization of school facilities. Senator Stanley’s bill passed out of the Senate on near-unanimous lines, and awaits a hearing in House Appropriations, the same committee that failed to hear Delegate O’Quinn’s aforementioned bill.


Why it matters: 

  • 60% of Virginia public school buildings are 40 years or older, and 36% are 50 years or older. Studies have shown that teachers and students are happier, calmer, healthier, and readier to learn in modernized school classrooms, while aging infrastructure disproportionately burdens poorer, rural counties.
  • Toiling with the funding question is not new. Prior to 2009, a few sources of state funding were available to help with capital costs for repair but suffered large cuts in response to the Great Recession. Some localities have sought to increase their own construction coffers by rallying the GA to allow them to raise their own taxes, using new revenues to fund repairs, but many lawmakers have discounted this approach as palliative. Issuing state bonds to finance construction projects, some lawmakers counter could threaten the state’s AAA bond rating.


Standards of Learning (SOLs) - Best practices for the administration of statewide SOL tests, a barometer for student achievement and school performance, has drawn deep division. Lessening the emphasis on SOL testing in the Commonwealth is generally a bipartisan issue, but still draws a fault line among Democrats.


  • LEFT IN HOUSE COMMITTEE

Delegate O’Quinn’s bill to reduce the total number and type of required Standards of Learning assessments administered in Virginia (29) to the minimum federal standard (17).

  • PASSED IN SENATE COMMITTEE

Delegate Carrie Coyner’s bill to replace an end-of-year SOL test with a through-year growth assessment system. The new system would be established by the Board of Education and requires that the total time scheduled for taking all such assessments must not exceed 150 percent of the time scheduled for taking a single, end-of-year test. The bill passed out of the House on a near-unanimous vote.


Why it matters: 

  • SOL performance reports are tied to certain funding opportunities for the schools administering them. As a result, curriculum can centralize subjects tested by SOLs, like reading and mathematics, which can preclude more time spent on subjects not on SOLs, like arts and other humanities.


Broadband - Widespread adoption of online learning in response to the pandemic has exposed the chasm in educational access caused by lack of stable internet connection, especially for rural students. Both parties and chambers frequently cite the need to expand broadband access to under- and unserved communities as a matter of achieving educational equity. 


  • PASSED IN BOTH CHAMBERS

Senator Jennifer Boysko’s bill to allow certain electric utilities and municipal/government-owned broadband authorities to petition the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to provide broadband capacity to unserved areas of the Commonwealth.

  • PASSED IN BOTH CHAMBERS

Senator Boysko’s bill to authorize school boards to appropriate funds and partner with private broadband service providers for the purposes of promoting and facilitating the expansion and operation of broadband services to student households that can’t afford broadband.


Why it matters: 

  • In rural Virginia, 80% of the population has access to at least low-speed, unreliable internet while 69% have access to high-speed connections.

Additional Noteworthy Education Bills:


School Support Staff


  • LEFT IN HOUSE COMMITTEE

Delegate Lashrecse Aird’s bill to increase resources for academic support staff and bring down the student-to-counselor ratio. Coined the School Equity and Staffing Act, the legislation would be a bold investment in under-resourced schools.


Why it matters:

  • Support staff is invaluable to a healthy educational ecosystem, especially schools in urban and rural districts: counselors serve as career and college advisors, parental liaisons, and life and health counselors; school nurses may be the only healthcare provider some students ever see; first responders react to students in crisis; bus drivers ensure students get to and from school safely; and custodial staff create healthier learning environments.


Teacher Salaries


  • LEFT IN HOUSE COMMITTEE

Delegate Martha Mugler’s bill to compensate teachers at or above the national salary average.


Why it matters:

  • Virginia is the 12th wealthiest state but ranks 32nd in the nation in teacher pay. Elementary and secondary teachers in Virginia earn $51,371 and $53,777 per year, respectively, while the national average for public school teachers is $60,477 per year. Evidence indicates higher pay leads to more successful teachers, and in turn higher-achieving students.


Equitable Access to a Nurse


  • FAILED IN SENATE COMMITTEE

Delegate Dawn Adams’ bill to require each local school board to employ at least one full-time registered nurse in each public school (K-12) in the local school division. After passing out of the House on a broad bipartisan basis, the bill failed to report in the Senate’s Education and Health Committee.


Why it matters: 

  • Access to a registered nurse in every school is not guaranteed in Virginia, instead allowing any school personnel to assume this position without explicit nursing credentials, which represents a glaring gap in educational equity.


Financial Aid for Undocumented Students


  • PASSED IN BOTH CHAMBERS

Sen. Boysko’s bill to allow in-state eligible students access to state financial aid, school-issued aid, and Tuition Assistance Grants for private schools regardless of immigration status. The bill complements legislation passed last year that grants in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants.


Why it matters:

  • There are 270,000 undocumented immigrants living in Virginia; removing financial barriers to the Commonwealth’s renowned higher education opportunities for these residents will not only ensure more equitable educational access but will also help keep talent in the state.

[Virginia Mercury] Data Center Bills Dominated This Year’s General Assembly. Here’s What Happened

By VOW Ops • March 19, 2026
Virginia’s growing data center economy was the center of attention for this year’s General Assembly session, with lawmakers balancing the industry’s benefits against its costs to communities. Of the many bills that were proposed to regulate data centers, some passed both the House and Senate and now head to Governor Spanberger’s desk for either her signature or veto. SB 253 (Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth) would extend a program Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Company offer low-income customers to reduce their monthly energy bills by weatherproofing their houses. The bill also gives the State Corporation Commission (SCC) the liberty to determine if more of the cost of generating electricity for data centers should fall onto them and large manufacturers instead of homeowners. SB 553 (Sen. Srinivasan, D-Loudoun) would direct water utilities to provide monthly or quarterly reports on how much water they are providing to data centers. Currently, data centers can withhold their water usage as an industry secret. SB 94 (Sen. Roem, D-Manassas) and HB 153 (Del. Thomas, D-Prince William) would require applicants who request localities to rezone for “high-load users” to submit site assessment reports. Localities would then be able to use the information from said reports to determine if the application conforms with their zoning requirements. HB 507 (Del. McAuliff, D-Loudoun) would mandate the Department of Environmental Quality to deny air permits for data center generators after July 2026 unless they meet stricter environmental regulations. Currently, data centers are allowed limited use of backup generators that run on diesel fuel, which have resulted in next-door neighbors complaining of noxious fumes spilling into their communities. HB 323 (Del. Sullivan, D-Fairfax) directs the Department of Energy to study how to best utilize waste heat generated by data centers to meet heating demands from neighboring buildings. One of the most robust debates involving data centers revolved around the sales tax exemption given to them on their server equipment and software. The Senate budget bill would end the exemption, hoping to recover the $1.6 billion they argue the state loses annually as a result. The House budget bill would keep the exemption but stipulate additional requirements for data centers to remain in compliance with receiving the exemption. The data center industry has rebutted the proposals to end the tax exemption, arguing that it has brought billions of dollars in investment into Virginia. Furthermore, the issue does not fall along clear, partisan lines, with both Democrats and Republicans arguing for against ending the exemption. The issue has ultimately ground Virginia’s budget approval process to a halt, with neither chamber coming to a consensus on the state’s biennial budget. Governor Spanberger has called for a special session beginning April 23rd so that the General Assembly can resolve the dispute. You can read the full article here for more details.

[The Economist] Americans’ Electricity Bills Are Up. Don’t Blame AI

By VOW Ops • March 9, 2026
Power bills are going up in America and the people are angry. They know whom to blame—the bosses of technology firms thirsting for more juice to fuel artificial-intelligence data centres. Ashburn, a town of 45,000 in a featureless part of Virginia that has earned the nickname “Data Centre Alley”, has some 150 of these. They consume roughly as much electricity as Philadelphia, a city of 1.6m. On March 4th Donald Trump convened tech leaders to sign a pledge to “build, bring or buy their own power supply…ensuring that Americans’ electricity bills will not increase”. Their solemn pledges notwithstanding, the chief executives can do little to contain prices. That is not, though, because AI is unstoppable. It is because the AI boom is not chiefly to blame for the rising costs. In the past few years retail electricity prices have indeed outpaced overall inflation (see chart 1). And data centres are gobbling up more power. Goldman Sachs, a bank, reckons that they will account for nearly half of the overall demand growth in America in the coming years. Yet even bullish forecasts put data centres’ share of total demand at only a fifth in 2030. Today it is less than a tenth. A study last year by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed that data-centre load was not the main cause of the rate rises in the five years to 2024. It fingered grid upgrades and rising costs of power-generating equipment and raw materials such as copper. Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, estimates that last year demand for distribution transformers outstripped supply by 10%. For power transformers the gap was 30%. Manufacturers report waiting lists for essential grid-related kit stretching to 120 weeks or more, up from 50 weeks in 2021. Many prices started going up in early 2021, nearly two years before the launch of ChatGPT ignited the AI boom. They are likely to keep rising for non-AI reasons. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents private-sector utilities, predicts its members’ cumulative capital spending will reach $1.1trn between 2025 and 2029, up from $765bn in the previous five years. More than half the sum for distribution and transmission infrastructure will go on replacing ageing equipment and hardening it against extreme weather made likelier by climate change. Between 2019 and 2023 big Californian utilities spent $27bn just on mitigating wildfire risk. These investments have been neglected for years. Now, says an industry bigwig, AI provides a pretext to help win approval from regulators to pass the cost on to consumers. And these are not the only non-AI cost pressures. Even before the war in Iran caused natural-gas prices to rise, analysts were predicting that domestic buyers would be increasingly competing with foreign ones as more export terminals for liquefied natural gas come online. Mr Trump, an inveterate renewables sceptic, has not helped by impeding the growth of solar and wind capacity. Peter Fox-Penner of the Brattle Group, a consultancy, notes that as a result prices are rising needlessly for the cheapest forms of new power generation. AI may even be lowering prices. The tech giants are already investing in their own capacity (mostly, whisper it, in the clean variety). Microsoft has signed a long-term deal to restart a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island to supply its data centres. Meta has backed a handful of nuclear startups. In December Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet, paid $5bn for Intersect Power, a developer of utility-scale solar power and battery storage. A data centre in Ashburn belonging to Equinix, a big operator, is experimenting with fuel cells. Besides adding its own supply, big tech is making existing capacity more flexible. Google has agreed to novel tariff arrangements with Indiana Michigan Power, a midwestern utility, whereby its data centres can reduce their consumption when other demand is high. Microsoft is going further. In one of its Irish data centres it uses backup batteries as a “grid stabiliser” that can push power back into the network or draw excess power from it at times of stress. Since grids often run well below full capacity, adding a large, flexible customer can bring in lots of revenue for utilities without requiring costly expansion. This lets the utilities lower rates for households while preserving their margins. The Electric Power Research Institute, a think-tank, found that some states with high load growth between 2019 and 2024 reported price declines, after adjusting for inflation (see chart 2). The World Resources Institute, another think-tank, notes that in North Dakota rising demand from oil and gas extraction, cryptocurrency miners, data-centre operators and food-processors led to large price reductions for local electricity users. PG&E, a big Californian utility, estimates that adding a gigawatt of load could lower bills by up to 2%. If Americans want lower electricity bills, they should be shouting for more AI, not less. Original article can be found here .

[Virginia Public Media] Data: Virginia’s Early Childhood Education Providers Are Succeeding

By VOW Ops • January 21, 2026
The second year of results from Virginia’s recently established Quality Establishment and Improvement System (VQB5) for early childhood education found that 99% of childcare providers receiving state funding meet or exceed quality expectations. As of early December 2025, over 154,000 views have been recorded on the system’s website since its October 2024 debut, revealing the many parents and families who appreciate the information that VQB5 offers them. None of these wonderful results would even be available to admire without the support and success we had in passing HB 1012 and SB 578 back in 2020! The data focuses on classroom interactions between children and caregivers and notes how said interactions encourage kids to express themselves at a young age. The state has also enacted categories of excellence for providers who score in the top 10%, exceed quality expectations, or even show significant improvement from an evaluation the year before. On top of that, a new data system called VAConnects helps integrate information on students over the years to track their learning progress. The Department of Education wishes to sustain the program and has requested $735,000 to do so. Overall, Virginia is serving as a model for other states to use in establishing best practices for their early childhood programs. Read more here .
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