Virginia’s complicated formula for funding K-12 schools needs an overhaul in order for the state to adequately fund public education, according to the results of a major legislative study presented Monday.
A report issued this week by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services lays out how various state and local entities plan to spend roughly $10 million in anti-gun violence funding recently approved by the General Assembly.
Nottoway, a rural Southside county of roughly 15,500 people about 60 miles southwest of Richmond, is the latest Virginia locality having a heated debate about who should run its elections.
The doughnut deliveries to 19 schools in the Williamsburg-James City County and New Kent County school districts were accepted. But — in a sign of the intensity of Virginia’s political debates over K-12 public schools — some in the Williamsburg-James City County system saw an ulterior motive hidden beneath the glaze and sprinkles.
In a letter sent Thursday to the head of the Washington-based Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals said the state would no longer participate in the data-sharing program despite being one of seven founding states in 2012.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration last fall applied for federal funding meant to help Virginia continue to implement its red flag law, a gun control measure strongly opposed by many Republican lawmakers and gun rights activists. State officials say the roughly $5 million hasn’t been formally accepted and no decisions have been made about how it might be used.
Government bodies in Virginia cannot ask the public to sit in a separate room and observe their meetings through a video feed only, according to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
The Virginia Department of Elections says it has “streamlined” the process of removing dead voters from the rolls by allowing local registrars to use obituaries to confirm deaths and creating a form meant to make it easier for family members to notify election offices after a death.
State Senator Lionel Spruill will be meeting with Gov. Glenn Youngkin to discuss voting rights restoration to people who have felony convictions.
In normal years, Virginia’s budget plan is supposed to be pretty much done by April except for any late changes recommended by the governor. But for the second year in row, the politically split General Assembly is heading into spring under a cloud of uncertainty over when the budget will get done and what will be in it.
