The Virginia Board of Education’s lab school committee voted on Thursday to alter the lab school application process by eliminating the standard second review of applications and instead recommending the approval of lab schools upon first review.
The change in the lab school approval process comes as the future of lab school funding is in flux, and the lab school funding in the current budget can be used only until June 30.
In its first 3-2 vote since the inception of the committee, the committee chair and vice chair raised serious objections to forgoing the standard process that applies to all state Board of Education standing committees.
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“The very role of a standing committee charged under law is to start a process to review applications. That is our role. That is our charge,” said committee Chair Joan Wodiska.
“There are millions of taxpayer dollars at stake in these conversations.” But most important, she said, “is the welfare of the students and educational professionals that will be at these lab schools.”
Wodiska served as vice president of the state Board of Education as an appointee of then-Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, and also served three terms on the Falls Church City School Board.
Lab schools are Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s signature school choice initiative. They are partnerships between universities, school divisions and sometimes businesses that provide nonreligious education to K-12 students. They are open to the public and do not charge tuition.
Similar to charter schools, they can set their own budgets and curricula. Although lab schools receive public funding, they are expected to be financially self-sufficient within a few years.
Youngkin proposed an additional $60 million for lab schools. The General Assembly’s budget agreement did not include that proposal, and the legislature reallocated to the state’s general fund $85.1 million of unused lab school funding from the original $100 million allocation in 2022.
Legislators will return to Richmond on Wednesday to take up the governor’s 153 vetoes and his proposed amendments to 116 bills — most notably the budget. Youngkin is seeking to restore the $85 million in lab school funding.
Committee members Bill Hansen and Andy Rotherham, who both serve on the state Board of Education, pushed for the change and said it is about streamlining the process and maximizing efficiency while maintaining quality.
“The board felt it important to establish this committee to help bring in outside public expertise, which we have on this committee with the three non-state (Board of Education) members and as well as the process and the openness that we’ve been running throughout this process,” Hansen said. “I think if anything, we have had a double, triple, quadruple measure of accountability and oversight and ensuring a quality outcome.”
Wodiska noted that the recommendation to waive a second review was added to the agenda at the last minute. Board members received the agenda item a few hours before the start of the meeting, and it was not uploaded online for the public until after the meeting had begun.
“I believe that we have a responsibility to run a quality process and not providing information in a timely manner to the committee members, as well as to the public, jeopardizes the ability to have that deliberative review process,” Wodiska said.
“As a local school board member and prior member of the state Board of Education, it was ingrained in me that a quality process equals a quality outcome,” Wodiska said. “Paramount in that is the public engagements, the public’s opportunity to review materials, to have opportunity to deliberate. As evidenced here by the agenda today, I think that we have work to be done to ensure that we are truly having the discipline of process.”
Vice Chair Pam Moran, who said she did not want to vote no, proposed adding an “asterisk” on the recommendation that would allow the committee to send an application back to the state education department for a second review.
Other board members did not bite on her idea, and Moran ultimately voted no on the recommendation to eliminate second review.