Local school divisions in Virginia are getting roughly $201 million less in state aid than they’d anticipated because of erroneous estimates provided by the Virginia Department of Education.

The department informed local school divisions about the gap last Friday, leaving school districts rushing to slash budgets they’d already allocated.

Virginia Department of Education spokesperson Charles Pyle told DCist/WAMU that the department “takes ownership” of the mistake.

“This was human error,” he said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t catch it until last week.”

Pyle said the error did not prevent schools divisions from getting all funds appropriated by the General Assembly. He attributed the miscalculations to a “faulty tool” on the department of education’s website that local school divisions use to estimate how much state aid they will be receiving. The tool used an incorrect formula which Pyle called “a very technical issue that would be hard to describe in detail.” He said the department will make a corrected tool available to local school divisions next week.

For fiscal year 2023, Pyle said the state is providing just under $11 billion in direct aid to public education, per the Appropriation Act approved last June. He said it is a slight increase from the previous fiscal year, when the state allocated $9.2 billion in aid.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the estimates provided by the state failed to reflect a provision that holds localities harmless from the elimination of the state’s share of a grocery tax last year, money earmarked for education. In other words, the state was supposed to make up for the loss of that tax revenue, ensuring school district budgets weren’t shortchanged as a result.

Pyle, however, said the cause of the error is “subtler,” and that the error has not prevented school boards from getting those promised payments.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin had pushed for the grocery tax cut, touting the state’s significant surplus as proof that it could cut taxes without slashing funding for schools. (Virginia had a $1.9 billion surplus at the end of the last fiscal year).

Babur Lateef, chairman-at-large for the Prince William County School Board, said the error leaves his division with an $11 million shortfall. The county school board had already planned its budget based on the incorrect calculations.

“We are scrambling to work out cuts to the budget, which may not even be announced tomorrow, because you know, we really didn’t get clarity on this,” Lateef said.

The department’s error is an especially hard blow for local school districts like Prince William County’s, which are more dependent on state aid. Just under half of the school district’s budget — 45% — comes from the state, Lateef says.

The $11 million shortfall in the Prince William school district budget, he adds, is not just in the short term; it’s a baseline adjustment to their annual budget every year going forward. And it comes at an extremely challenging time, following a pandemic that has made retention and recruitment even more difficult for schools.

“That affects our ability to pay people. It affects our ability to hire people,” Lateef says. “This will dramatically impact our ability to address issues with special education, counselors, things that have been in our budget for a long time.”

Lateef says schools need more funding, pointing to the state’s continued underfunding of the Virginia Standards of Quality for schools, the commonwealth’s constitutionally mandated learning requirements.

The department’s error, he says, is “massive” and unprecedented —  an “exclamation point” to what he describes as a “failed first year” for the Youngkin administration.

Lateef went on to say he feels the governor is getting his priorities wrong; he says localities need help from the state for things like retaining and recruiting teachers, not investigating schools for not delivering National Merit Scholarships on time.

“Instead of wasting time investigating school divisions in Northern Virginia he may want to invest in some math tutoring for his own staff,” he quipped.

State Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw said in a statement that Democrats in the state senate will be working to ensure “localities get the funding they need” over the next few weeks at budget talks. He was joined by other Democrats who expressed outrage at the error and called for more school funding.

“Governor Youngkin’s administrations’ incompetence is on full display today,” Sen. Scott Surovell said. “This egregious error miscalculating over 200 million dollars for our public schools will have lasting effects on Virginia’s children. One thing is clear, this is no time to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, instead we must fully fund our public schools.”