Five of the 12 lab schools planning to open their doors to students this fall have one more hoop to jump through before they can do so.
Three of those affected are in Southwest Virginia. College partnership lab schools developed by Roanoke College, Emory & Henry College and Mountain Gateway Community College must find a four-year public institution of higher education to back them if they want to keep the millions in state funding they’ve been granted to launch their concepts, according to details of the state budget signed May 13.
The lab schools are intended to foster innovative teaching methods and train new generations of teachers. The adjustment brings the rules for lab school funding back in line with the original plan that was agreed to in the General Assembly in 2022, but a short timeline could create challenges for these projects.
The Richmond-Times Dispatch reported Wednesday that the five colleges must resubmit their applications and secure a public fiscal agent — someone to handle the money coming from the state — by June 30. However, according to language in the state budget, the schools do not have to go through the application process again, and only must resubmit the contracts for their lab school funding to show they have found a public partner. In addition, each lab school project will have to provide financial sustainability reports showing they’ll be self-sufficient once state funding for the lab school’s launch and initial years of operation runs out.
Roanoke College, one of the two private schools in Southwest Virginia affected by the new requirements, is working on a fix.
“We were notified last week that we may have to make a contract addendum in late June to include a public fiscal sponsor,” Roanoke College spokesperson Rita Farlow said Wednesday. “We’re happy to make the necessary adjustments and look forward to this exciting project progressing.”
Its lab school, which had been slated to receive $2.38 million over four years from the state, will work with Salem City Schools to offer tracks for education/global studies, STEM/health care and communications/civic engagement.
Emory & Henry College is “continuing to move forward with the new guidelines,” according to a statement Wednesday from the college, which plans to open its medical careers-focused lab school this fall for high school students across several counties in Southwest Virginia. It had been set to receive $3.85 million from the state over four years.
Roanoke College and Emory & Henry College received the final sign-off to launch their lab schools in late April.
Mountain Gateway Community College in Alleghany County, which was slated to get $2.7 million from the state, also over four years, had no comment Wednesday. But the school plans to release more details in the next few days, a spokesperson said. That school, which the education department approved in March, will focus on information technology.
Germanna Community College and Paul D. Camp Community College, which sponsored the other approved projects affected by the stipulation, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
It’s unclear which public universities would be willing to serve as fiscal agents for the five projects that need them. The budget specifies that those public universities must already have been approved for a lab school project.
Nearby options for Mountain Gateway include James Madison University and the University of Virginia. But all of the other lab school applications south of Harrisonburg and Charlottesville have been submitted by community colleges or private colleges.
Emory & Henry’s concept originally planned for the University of Virginia’s College at Wise to work with the lab school in its second year, but UVA-Wise has not submitted an application to launch its own lab school.
Department of Education spokesperson Todd Reid said in an email Wednesday that discussions with the affected colleges “have been ongoing alongside the passage of the budget.”
An official in the Youngkin administration said Wednesday that Aimee Guidera, the secretary of education, “has been in close communication with all the presidents of the schools in question.” The official also confirmed that the five schools will not have to reapply for lab school approval.
Questions about eligibility to launch lab schools have dogged the application process for more than a year. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pushed for lab schools, which will accept students by lottery, as a school choice option. The schools have been permitted in Virginia for a decade, but Democrats in the General Assembly have been concerned that funding Youngkin’s recent efforts could take money away from existing public schools.
Virginia law stipulates that any higher education institution can apply to start a lab school, but $100 million in state funding authorized in 2022 to jumpstart lab school projects is restricted to public, four-year schools.
Despite the restriction in the 2022 budget, the Department of Education and its lab school committee had been operating under the broader law, welcoming applications from public universities alongside private colleges and state-run community colleges.
The latest budget that goes into effect July 1 reiterates that lab school sponsors must be public, four-year institutions. Projects sponsored by two-year or private colleges that have already gotten the OK to open their doors can keep their funding only if they partner with a public fiscal agent.
In an interview Wednesday, Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, said the stipulations were added to the budget during negotiations this spring. Though the intent of the lab school funding was to assist projects led by public universities, “in budget negotiations we granted this latitude with guardrails” for private and community college projects already in progress.
“Every lab school is on track to meet the changed requirements created in the final budget language by the General Assembly,” the governor’s office said in a statement Wednesday after the Department of Education approved two more lab schools, sponsored by Old Dominion and George Mason universities.
Before the education department approved the ODU and George Mason projects on Tuesday, Assistant Superintendent of Strategic Innovation Andy Armstrong explained that two-thirds of the money the department has already obligated toward lab school projects has gone to four-year public universities.
The other third — about $22 million — has been obligated to either two-year colleges or private four-year schools.
There’s about $3.5 million left in the fund, and two more applications in the pipeline from public universities that have to be considered before the end of the fiscal year.
“There are several variables I think are still in play that we have to monitor in the weeks to come,” Armstrong said at the meeting, referencing the budget.
Board of Education member Anne Holton asked if it’s possible that some of the funds allocated to those lab school projects sponsored by private or two-year schools could “come back into the hopper” if those projects don’t follow through with the adjusted requirements.
“We hope not, but that of course is a possibility,” Armstrong replied.
Staff writer Susan Cameron contributed information to this report.