Fairfax County School Board: State and Federal Legislative Program

The School Board adopts a legislative program each year to communicate its positions on key policy issues. This program outlines the Board's stances on significant state and federal matters. FCPS has identified the most critical issues for FCPS as "priorities".

Fairfax County School Board 2024 State Priority Positions

The Fairfax County School Board (FCSB) believes that public education should be based on a strong partnership between the Commonwealth and local school divisions, with the state fairly sharing in the true costs of implementing a locally-based and student-centered high-quality public education system. While we understand the state’s role in standard setting, the supervision of schools and flexibility in policy implementation should remain with local school boards per the Virginia Constitution.

State Funding Supports

The FCSB supports addressing state Standards of Quality (SOQ) funding formula imbalances and inadequacies through the implementation of many of the Near- and Long-Term recommendations made by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission’s (JLARC) K-12 Funding Formula study, including:

• Elimination of Great Recession-era cost reduction measures (which includes the state cap on support position funding); calculating prevailing costs using division averages; and updating out-of-date salary assumptions during re-benchmarking
• Replacing the existing cost of competing adjustment (COCA) with a newer, more accurate adjustment based on a Virginia cost of labor index, or at least fully funding the existing COCA

Workforce Shortages

• The FCSB supports funding and initiatives to address ongoing and acute shortages of highly qualified educational and professional staff, including addressing compensation, the cost of preparation programs, and streamlining and simplifying licensure processes

Student Academic Success

• The FCSB supports ensuring students have multiple pathways to earn a diploma, as well as access to dual enrollment and work-based learning opportunities to prepare for postsecondary and workforce opportunities
• The FCSB supports a shift away from standardized assessments and toward a more balanced state assessment system, based on the principles of universal assessment design, and including performance-based assessments which inform instruction

Student Safety, Security, and Wellbeing

• The FCSB supports flexible state resources for school divisions to implement infrastructure and personnel-based safety improvements in local school facilities 
• The FCSB supports dedicated and ongoing state resources to facilitate local participation as Virginia joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Rap Back Service
• The FCSB supports additional state resources dedicated toward expanding both school and community-based student mental, behavioral, and substance abuse health services
• The FCSB supports additional state resources dedicated toward the costs of expanding the availability of free meals in schools 
• The FCSB supports additional local authority and flexibility to improve pedestrian safety in and around school zones

Early Childhood

• The FCSB supports increased state per-pupil funding for early childhood programming and related facilities costs

Fairfax County School Board 2024 Federal Priority Positions

The Fairfax County School Board (FCSB) supports full and adequate funding to implement federal mandates, such as those found in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as well as broad flexibility to empower states and localities to fulfill mandated program requirements.

Title I

• The FCSB supports increased funding for the federal Title I, Part A grant within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that serves schools with the highest percentage of children from low-income families.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 

• The FCSB supports mandatory funding for chronically underfunded special education programs to meet the federal commitment to fund 40 percent of the “excess costs” of special education as promised but never realized since the 1975 adoption of federal special education laws (currently known as IDEA).

Federal Meals Reimbursement

• The FCSB supports the restoration of enhanced United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) federal reimbursement rates to resume the provision of high-quality and nutritious free meals to all students. 

Impact Aid

• The FCSB supports full funding for the federal Impact Aid program, which is intended to offset the local impact of Fairfax’s over 19,000 federally-connected students as well as those associated with federal military base relocation decisions.

Learning Recovery

• The FCSB supports continued federal funding dedicated to learning recovery services for our most vulnerable student populations.

Title IX

• The FCSB supports repealing the U.S. Department of Education’s Final Rule under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (released May 2020), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance and, in the interim, returning to the pre-May Rule.

Student Safety

• The FCSB supports requiring all states to participate in the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) Noncriminal Justice Rap Back Service.

Cybersecurity

• The FCSB supports increased federal resources dedicated to cyber and data security for school and school division technology infrastructure.