The new school year starts in just a few weeks in Northern Virginia. But with General assembly negotiations ongoing over how to spend the state budget surplus, local schools are preparing to open their doors without hoped-for state support.

In Loudoun County, the school board took the unusual step of delaying the final approval of its FY24 operating budget until this week, the result of the uncertainty in Richmond.

“The approval came outside the traditional budget cycle due to the lack of a final state budget,” LCPS said in a news release. (Virginia operates on two-year budget cycles, so lawmakers have been considering an update to the budget they passed last year, which would allocate the surplus.)

In their final budget, LCPS staff pared back its expected state revenues to include only what the General Assembly already allocated in a stopgap measure earlier this spring.

Most local school boards approved their budgets in the spring, after the General Assembly passed a $1 billion “skinny budget” that included nearly $17 million in money for K-12 schools meant to help shore up a funding gap. The gap was due to a state Department of Education calculation error which resulted in a $201 million shortfall in what schools received compared to what they expected. An additional $230 million shortfall in state support is expected in this fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the politically-split General Assembly has so far failed to reach a compromise on a budget update to spend the state’s $3.6 billion surplus, which could include more education spending, a focal point in the back-and-forth between Senate Democrats and House Republicans.

Some school boards have had to turn to localities for an additional boost in funding to help them through the uncertainty. In Loudoun, the schools’ final operating budget also depended on an additional $16.3 million allocated by the county’s Board of Supervisors to fill in funding gaps at the state level.

As a result, school leaders cautioned that their financial outlook for the fiscal year that just started in July was still unclear heading into the school year.

Loudoun schools administrative staff told the school board that they did not expect to see additional money from the state at this point.

“You know that I do not like to speculate as to what a bunch of elected officials will do,”

said Leigh Burden, the chief financial officer for Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia’s largest school system, said in response to a question about the outstanding state budget deal at a school board meeting in July.

“I don’t know what the General Assembly will do,” Burden continued. “They could leave the budget as is. They could add some other initiatives to it.”

And if those added state initiatives come with an expectation that local governments provide matching funds, school boards would have to scramble to come up with the money, Burden noted.

“I’m wondering how we should kind of hedge our bets a little bit in order to be able to take advantage of some of those things that in the past we have not been able to because we just haven’t had the funding,” said Fairfax school board member Dr. Riccardy Anderson, in a July discussion of FCPS’ carryover funds from FY 2023.

Eleventh-hour state initiatives could particularly affect things like staff pay increases, the cost of which are typically borne by the state and localities together. Virginia’s funding formula for public schools is based off the relative wealth of the locality, meaning that when the state passes a raise for educators, the majority of that money in Northern Virginia actually comes from local coffers.

The current state budget allows for a 5% raise for school staff, but other school staff pay initiatives are wrapped up in the still-ongoing budget deliberations in Richmond. That includes a one-time retention bonus proposed in Virginia Gov. Youngkin’s original budget plan. Senate Democrats’ opening proposal also included significant investments in schools, including an additional 2% raise, a $1,000 bonus, and an attempt to lift the cap on state funding for support staff roles, a relic of austerity measures during the Great Recession.

Outstanding questions about staff pay was the main issue holding up the final approval of the LCPS budget. The school board adopted its FY24 budget plan earlier in the year, but delayed cost-of-living adjustments and pay increases originally planned for July 1. The schools will now pay staff those amounts retroactively.

The LCPS final budget adjustment also eliminates $5.4 million originally set aside to fund the local portion of Youngkin’s proposed educator bonus. Instead, it directs the money towards costs for substitute teachers and support positions in Title I schools.

School leaders had hoped that funding from the state surplus could help them hire and retain teachers at a time when many are scrambling to hire staff before the school year begins.

“Had the Governor and the General Assembly spent the surplus funds on education like he promised, we would have been able to give a larger salary increase to our teachers,” said Prince William County school board chair Babur Lateef, in a statement to WAMU/DCist. “This would help address our recruitment and retention challenges.”

An analysis from The Washington Post found that Northern Virginia schools are facing steeper teacher turnover this year than last year.

“The surplus would’ve gone a long way in helping us reach our goals and paying our teachers fairly and competitively with other states,” Lateef added. He also said it could have funded mental health counselors, instructional coaches, and other support staff positions in Prince William County, which relies on state support for nearly 50% of its school budget.

A much-discussed state report — which has been the subject of some political back-and-forth among lawmakers — found that Virginia has failed to keep pace with regional and national averages for K-12 funding by almost $2,000 per student. The same study found that localities pay for about 50% more staff than the state actually funds.

In Richmond, two sides are reportedly back at the negotiating table, with Republicans paring back many of their hoped-for recurring tax cuts to one-time rebates but also asking that Democrats similarly limit their spending priorities to one-time expenditures. As negotiations continue, local school leaders will continue to wait — and prepare to open their doors for students in the fall.