Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Virginia the Best State in the Southeast for Teachers

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Source: WalletHub

If you put any faith in WalletHub’s rankings, Virginia is the 6th most teacher-friendly state in the country. The financial services website based its ranking on a basket of 16 metrics. Some highlights:

• 6th – Average Starting Salary for Teachers (adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 24th – Median Annual Salary for Teachers (adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 7th – WalletHub “School Systems” Ranking
• 3rd – Teachers’ Income Growth Potential
• 27th – School Safety
• 17th – Projected Number of Teachers per 1,000 Students by Year 2022
• 19th – Pupil-Teacher Ratio
• 25th – Public-School Spending per Student

— JAB

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15 responses to “Virginia the Best State in the Southeast for Teachers”

  1. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    Pull out the systems in Northern Virginia and see how the rest of the state would compare….Every state has regions of higher or lower economic strength, but Northern VA salaries set against a statewide average of living costs might tip the scales just a bit….

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    agree…. do that same data for RoVa… and it may not look as good.

  3. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    Unfortunately, Virginia’s mid-pack per pupil expenditures, according to JLARC’s Ranking of the States, show that the local governments are picking up more than their fair share.
    Virginia State & Local per pupil funding Rank 23rd
    Virginia State per pupil funding Rank 39th

    1. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      The problem is local real estate taxes are too low in much of RoVA because the LCI formula does not recognize the substantially higher costs of operation and cost of living in NoVA, most especially Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun Counties. Moreover, those school divisions have huge numbers of low-income kids, many of whom have families that are not English speakers at home. Any increase in state aid screws NoVA divisions.

      There also should be a minimum local tax effort required by the LCI.

      Now the sad thing is that many of our NoVA multi-degreed residents don’t understand this and hence enable it.

      1. TBill Avatar
        TBill

        How do we enable it TMT?
        Believe there is some recognition of state formula issues.

  4. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    “There also should be a minimum local tax effort required by the LCI. ”

    There is, it is called the Required Local Expenditure (RLE), based upon the Composite Index (Ability to pay). You are saying that there should be a minimum real estate tax rate but the poorer communities think there should be higher income tax rates. That is why both are included in the Composite Index measurement. I think that the Composite Index and funding should reflect the COL of a locality. Thus if the state says it should cost (statewide average) $10,000 per student, then NOVA’s funding should be based on that times 160% and Lynchburg’s should be based on that times 85%. The only problem is the Lynchburg educrats will still be pointing to the NOVA salaries while the NOVA educrats are pointing to the Alaskans’. salaries.
    And I can assure you the Real Estate tax rates in Lynchburg are just as high as Fairfax’s rates.

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    this is pretty interesting if the NoVa jurisdictions are claiming fiscal stress from the LCI

    FY 2014 Actual Local Expenditures for Operations Above RLE

    FAIRFAX 990,379,177 million
    ARLINGTON 233,942,847 million
    ALEXANDRIA 118,684,109 million
    LYNCHBURG 15,335,403 million

    keep in mind the above amounts are for things that are over and above the SOLs….

    http://www.doe.virginia.gov/school_finance/budget/required_local_effort/2014-2015.pdf

    1. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      Larry, do you know what this is on a per-student basis?

  6. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    It’s just the total amount over the required match…. gross dollars…
    in the budget…

  7. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    All per pupil RLE & RLM is available here.

    http://www.doe.virginia.gov/school_finance/budget/calc_tools/index.shtml

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      not sure where exactly you’re getting per pupil data… can you give the link , page number?

  8. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    I gave you the link. Click on a template and follow the bouncing ball. You will have to use some of those intelligence genes and be able to convert the locality’s RLE & RLM into per pupil data but it is all there.

  9. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    here’s some data for Fairfax –

    from their 2017 budget;

    County General Fund SOF Transfer $ 1,825.2 (millions)
    State Aid $ 405.8 million

    https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/FY17Approved%20Budget_0.pdf page 57 pdf page, doc page = 41

    and we know from the VDOE doc (referenced above)

    that the required local effort (RLE) for Fairfax (2014) is
    $774,574,006 million

    so if you take the county transfer number and subtract the RLE number added to the State Aid number you get

    $774,574,006
    405,800,000
    ——————-
    1,180,374, 006 so this is the local effort plus state aid amount that is required to be spent on the SOQ (approx since I’m using different years)

    so if you take THAT number and subtract it from the total amount of the Country transfer to schools:

    $ 1,825,000,000 total county transfer to schools
    $1,180,374, 006 total amount required for funding SOQs
    ——————–
    $644,625,994 amount is excess of required SOQ funding.

    the above number is very, very rough since I mixed years – the 2014 number in the VDOE doc (page 7) is 990,379,177

    alright – so just take the total amount required for SOQ funding and divide in by 110,000 which is the number of students:

    $1,180,374, 006 / 110,000 = $10,730 SOQ funding per student

    but if you take the actual county transfer number:

    $ 1,825,000,000 /110,000 = $16,590 total county funding per student

    then subtract the two:

    $16,590 – $10,730= $5860 per student over and above required
    required SOQ funding.

    Now the DIFFERENCE is that the required SOQ funding is for the SOLs specifically whereas the $5860 per student is for other things the school – and the county have CHOSEN to fund with local funding not encumbered by the SOQ requirements.

    But here’s the big rub.

    because there are no rules that require Fairfax or any other school system in Va to actually detail separately what that extra 5860 is actually spend for so people can see what the schools have chosen to fund over and above the SOQ SOLs – it’s very different to determine.

    this is true across Virginia if you look down the VDOE doc on the column labeled

    “FY 2014 Actual Local Expenditures for Operations Above RLE”

    for ANY county/city – then go to their school budget and try to find out how that local money is spent on non-SOQ/SOL purposes.

    I have not looked at all of them but the several ones I have – do not break out that money to show what priorities over and above the required SOQ/SOL were chosen.

    I’m not saying those priorities are “wrong” just that taxpayers don’t know and therefore can’t comment intelligently of those chosen priorities, disagree or advocate for different priorities or in the case of high spending schools – advocate for NOT funding some things the schools have decided they want funded.

    so basically – folks can’t determine very easily if the local discretionary money over and above the required SOQ match is spent for – say more Title 1 in low income elementary schools or ESOL or High School guitar lessons… etc.. on a line item basis but some non-SOQ spending can be found by deep diving the data.

    HOWEVER – I will point out that the Fairfax Schools Budget doc IS pretty transparent and point folks to page 67/51 where they actually detail per pupil costs for not only elementary, middle and high but for Title 1/head start, ESOL , special ed, etc..

    they will spend $15,030 per at risk kid in elementary… and an additional $3,753 on 992 ESOL students.

    What we don’t know is HOW that extra money is actually spent – on more staff…. on staff with Masters Degrees for teaching the harder-to-teach or ESOL kids… etc…

    and finally – you don’t know for the specific elementary schools that have high numbers of low-income/at risk and not good SOL scores if they have enough skilled staff and veteran teachers or if the staff is weak , entry level, etc.

    If this whole area sounds complicated – then I’d agree… but you can work through some of it if time is invested… and conversely if snap judgements made on perceptions and snap-shot data… labeling teachers as “bad” or “union-protected”, incompetent, etc.. just totally blows up any informative discussion of the real issues.

    but it does appear to me that Fairfax has CHOSEN to spent significantly more money -$5,000 per student – over and above what the state requires…. which is far, far more than most school systems in Va – like Lynchburg ….

  10. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    Don’t you worry your pretty little head about Lynchburg’s per pupil expenditures because, based upon the COL, Lynchburgs’ exceeds that of Fairfax. You need to study the VDOE entitlement sheets.

  11. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    And if you want the data points:

    FY2015 per pupil expenditures for operations;
    Fairfax $14,218
    Lynchburg $11,508
    Cost of living;
    Fairfax 136.3% of USA
    Lynchburg 85.3% of USA

    Adjusted per pupil expenditures;
    Fairfax $14,218 / 1.363 = $10,431.40
    Lynchburg $11,508 / .853 = $13,491.20

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