As the school-age population continues to decline and several schools in Virginia risk closure, the state Board of Education is trying to get ahead of the issue by encouraging school districts to open up their attendance zones.
That could enable more Virginia parents to choose the public schools that they want their kids to attend.
Over the past 10 years, Virginia's K-12 public schools have seen a 24,000-student drop, and future projections predict an additional 20,000-student decline by 2028.
Birth rates have declined steadily, with a brief uptick during the COVID-19 pandemic that has contributed to more kindergarteners this year.
The most significant enrollment declines Virginia has seen are in Hampton Roads area, which has lost nearly 17,000 students over the past 10 years.
Decisions to close schools in Virginia are made solely at the local level. No matter how much enrollment drops, the state cannot shut down a school.
The Virginia Board of Education is working to come up with solutions -- including a new model school enrollment policy -- to help districts that might soon face tough decisions about closing or consolidating schools.
Current law permits, but does not require, each school board to establish and implement policies providing for open enrollment, the ability for families to choose which school they want their children to attend.
Some school divisions, including Richmond Public Schools, allow free transfers within the division, but state code does not bar school divisions from charging tuition to transfer students. At least 55 of the state's 131 school divisions charge tuition to transfer students, averaging $4,000 per year, according to a recent study from the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.
Virginia has no cross-district open enrollment, meaning a student whose primary residence is in the city of Richmond could not legally attend a public school in, say, Chesterfield County.
The Department of Education says it is putting together some best-practice tools for school districts that are interested in open enrollment.
At its next board meeting in December, the Virginia Board of Education will introduce out-of-zone enrollment and open enrollment policies to the board's strategic plan.
School districts will have the model policies as guidance, should they want to open up their school zones or stop charging tuition for students to attend public schools outside of their school zone. As with all model policies from the Department of Education, local school boards would not be required to adopt the state's guidance, but it puts pressure on districts to mirror the state's approach.
Grace Creasey, president of the Virginia Board of Education, said she does not foresee any opposition to the new model policies from fellow board members.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who leaves office in January, appointed all nine current members of the State Board of Education. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, will take over as governor Jan. 17, but the nine Youngkin appointees will remain on the board for now.
The Virginia Board of Education has broad constitutional authority that cannot be trumped by a governor.
On June 30, two appointments to the board will expire: Creasey, the board president, and Bill Hansen, the board's vice president. Two more Board of Education appointments are set to expire in June 2027, at which point Spanberger would have four appointments to the board, but not a majority. That's if the General Assembly confirms the three members Youngkin appointed this year, between last session and next session.
Governors usually achieve a full majority on the Virginia Board of Education about halfway through their term. But if the General Assembly blocks all three of Youngkin's appointments since the last regular General Assembly session, Spanberger could have a majority on the board by July.
During her campaign for governor, Spanberger published a plan for education, but it does not address school enrollment policies.
Richmond Public Schools is the area's only local division that lets students transfer to another school of their choice for free. Chesterfield and Hanover counties do not offer open enrollment.
Henrico County Public Schools does not offer open enrollment, either. It charges $6,100 tuition to transfer for a student who meets specific criteria, like extreme hardship or being a nonresident of Henrico whose primary parent works in the school system.
Eight school districts charge fees exceeding $10,000 per transfer student, peaking at $24,000 per high school student in the small Northern Virginia city of Falls Church.
During the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers considered a bill that would have directed the Virginia Department of Education to create model policies and guidance regarding open school enrollment by Aug. 1, 2024.
The bill passed the full House on a 68-29 vote, but the Senate Education and Health Committee killed the Senate version on a 9-6 party-line vote, with Democrats voting against it.
Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, said in a recent interview that Democrats shut down some "modest" bills at the time because they lacked trust in the governor.
"When you insist on putting in bills and supporting bills that try to privatize education ... there's just so little trust to do some of those modest things, because if you pass that bill, it goes to the governor's office and he can amend it and send it back," VanValkenburg said. "There was so little trust on things like that that at a certain point it was just kind of like, 'No, we're not letting any of that pass.' "
That 2024 legislation would have done what the state Board of Education is doing next month.
In addition to the open enrollment policies, the board's guidance will include other ways to address the reality that there are fewer K-12 students. One other solution is seat time flexibility, meaning students don't have to spend a set number of hours in a classroom to earn credit. Another is small learning communities -- smaller groups of students within a larger school who stay together and share the same core teachers.
School closures and consolidations are typically fraught and tend to be intensely political. State Board of Education member Amber Northern suggested alternatives to closures be included in the resources for school districts.
Some education professionals suggest consolidating staff instead of consolidating schools. For example, one teacher teaches three different grades or two schools share a principal.
Although the enrollment trend in Virginia is on a decline, staffing levels have increased. That means less money coming in and more money going out for schools.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment patterns in Virginia closely aligned with birth trends, offering a relatively stable and predictable outlook. But when the pandemic hit, droves of students left the public school system and never came back.
The rebound in enrollment from students returning to public schools, coupled with the downward trending birth rate, create two opposing forces shaping the landscape. That makes it more challenging than usual for school officials to predict enrollment.
The Virginia Department of Education has not yet published its annual enrollment count for this academic year. It usually comes out around Thanksgiving.