RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) Governor Terry McAuliffe would like to invest $139 million to hire 2,500 additional teachers in the next two years, in addition to giving teachers a 2% pay increase. The proposals for K-12 funding would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“If we have to find other areas to cut, hopefully we will be able to keep the investment that he’s put in K-12 that puts us back to where we were prior to the recession,” said Delegate Jennifer McClellan.
McClellan sits on the education committee and agrees more needs to be invested.
“I hear it all the time, not only from my constituents but the parents in the school and the teachers and pretty much everybody agrees,” said McClellan.
Meg Gruber with the Virginia Education Association says she’s worried whether the state can attract and retain teachers with the rate people have been leaving the profession.
“Since 2009 we’ve lost over 5,000 positions in our school systems across the state but our student body has been increasing, we’re starting to see those effects of larger class sizes,” Gruber said. ““Either leave their career to get jobs in other fields or retiring the minute they are eligible.”.
Jimmie Massie, who chairs the education committee, says the state still has one of the best education systems in the country and says the biggest complaints he gets is about paperwork, not money.
“I don’t agree that we haven’t done a pretty good job with our teachers,” he said. “The reality is that we probably do need to invest more, the perception is that we probably need to invest more and more and so the compromise will probably be somewhere in the middle.”
When asked if Republicans would be willing to spend $139 million to hire 2,500 additional teachers, Massie replied: “I think we’re open to that but we haven’t made that decision yet.”
