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The 2025 General Assembly session is getting started! Save the date and plan to join us this year for Capitol Day in Richmond on THURSDAY January 23rd (8am-1pm).
All PTA members across Virginia are invited to attend PTA Capitol Day. You'll be paired with an experienced PTA member from your area to meet with your legislator and share concerns from your school community. Afterwards, we'll meet-up and watch the start of the General Assembly session from the House Gallery.
As in years past, we expect our main focus will be on increasing education funding to reflect actual school division best practices by implementing JLARC's 2023 funding recommendations and lifting the cap on funding support staff. This year we anticipate renewed conversation and advocacy regarding the need for math specialists, and add-on supplemental funding for special education.
Additionally, we will continue to raise concerns about the new accountability system. Virginia PTA has a long history of advocating for robust, transparent assessment (testing) and accountability (performance measurement) systems. However, the new Accountability Framework introduces a 'performance task' test for 5th and 8th graders at the end of this school year that is not based on SOL curriculum, does not guide new instruction, and has not been developed. Additionally, the Virginia Department of Education has not set the student cut (minimum) SOL scores and they are still tinkering with the modeling that will place schools into the new four-category performance scale. All of which raises new concerns about the impact of implementing the Performance Framework before development is complete.
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