A BILL to amend the Code of Virginia by adding a section numbered 22.1-23.7, relating to Department of Education; English language learner students; expenditures; data collection; report.
HB1367, as substituted by the Senate Committee on Education and Health, requires the Virginia Department of Education to annually collect, maintain, publicly post, and report data on expenditures for the education of English language learner (ELL) students in each local school division. The report must be submitted by November 1 each year to the Board of Education, the Governor, and the General Assembly.
The required reporting must include the average expenditure for ELL students for the applicable year, broken out by each school in the division and also aggregated for elementary schools versus secondary schools. The bill is aimed at increasing transparency around how school divisions spend funds on services for students learning English, and it would create a new statutory reporting obligation for the Department of Education in consultation with local school boards.
The bill would add a new section, § 22.1-23.7, to the Code of Virginia and impose a recurring data-collection and public-reporting duty on the Department of Education. It would not directly change funding formulas or mandate a specific spending level, but it would require school divisions to provide expenditure data and would make those data publicly available, potentially affecting local school board reporting practices, administrative workload, and public oversight of ELL education spending.
The available voting history suggests the bill was broadly supported in committee, passing Finance and Appropriations 15-0 before being continued to the next session. No committee transcript is available, so there is no recorded debate to indicate opposition or concerns in the discussion materials provided. The overall posture in the available record appears favorable, with the bill advancing unanimously at the committee stage.
Because no committee transcript is provided, specific points of contention are not documented in the available materials. Based on the bill’s subject matter, any concerns would likely center on the administrative burden of collecting school-by-school expenditure data, the cost of compliance, data consistency across divisions, and whether the reporting requirements would meaningfully improve accountability without changing actual services for ELL students. However, these issues are inferred rather than explicitly stated in the record.