RICHMOND, VA – On Tuesday, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration had failed to adequately appropriate funds to public school systems that rely partially on state funding, leaving local K-12 schools across the Commonwealth stranded with far less funding than they had been promised and for which they had budgeted.

This avoidable human error has precipitated massive budgetary shortfalls in local school systems in every corner of Virginia. In Fairfax County, Youngkin’s error leaves students, teachers, administrators, and parents with a gap of nearly $18 million. In Chesterfield, that gap is $10.8 million. In Henrico, it’s $8.1 million.

Despite these troublingly large sums in some of Virginia’s most urban counties, the greatest impacts will be felt in rural portions of the Commonwealth, where public school systems rely on state funding for an even larger portion of the operating budget.

“The self-proclaimed ‘education governor’ has proven where his loyalty to students, teachers, and parents stops,” said Liam Watson, Press Secretary of the Democratic Party of Virginia. “If being the ‘education governor’ requires Governor Youngkin to do anything more than stoke culture wars and put coal in the engine of his self-serving 2024 bid for the GOP presidential nomination, he’s not interested.”

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