By Isabel Lewis, contributor
The school board on Tuesday approved a temporary budget which included a 12% raise for instructional assistants. This 2026-27 school budget is a placeholder for when the state approves its spending plan, which is not expected to be until June.
Instructional assistant raises will push that group’s compensation to $17.42 an hour — a change of more than a $2 per hour.
“Budgets are moral documents; they reflect what we value most,” Tim Howley, the board’s chair, wrote in an email to school district staff. “Harrisonburg City Public Schools values its people.”
Despite not having a completed budget at the state level, cities and counties must have an approved budget by the end of May. The school district’s budget is part of the city’s budget, and while the city council could bypass the school board and pass a budget, Superintendent Michael Richards says that the two prefer to work together. The city council is expected to pass its budget during its next meeting on May 26.
Over the past few months, instructional assistants across the city have spoken out about their struggles to get by with their income. After hearing emotional testimonies, school board members unanimously decided that approving raises for this group was a top priority, which the board reinforced two weeks ago when members refused to approve a temporary budget that included only a 3% raise for those employees.
“Let’s make sure that our instructional assistants hear us say you’re gonna get that raise,” Richards said.
To make this change, the budget had to be adjusted by about $1.4 million. In addition to accounting for the larger raises for instructional assistants, the adjustments addressed expected revenue decreases due to decreasing enrollment, an increase in expected state funding and changes to school utility costs.
This list details all reductions used to make way for the budget adjustments. If the board receives a surplus, they will restore each item from the top down. (Screenshot of Harrisonburg City Public Schools budget presentation).
Richards said he is fairly certain that a larger sum of money is expected to come from the state. He said that both the House and Senate, as well as the governor, have stated the importance of furthering education spending. However, the Senate’s proposed budget would benefit schools the most providing $200,000 more, Richards said.
Meanwhile, enrollment in city schools has been steadily decreasing for a few years. This is part of an ongoing national trend in schools. Many students are opting for hybrid or online learning, rather than face-to-face schools. This is coupled with decreasing fertility rates among American women, which researchers cite as a key factor for elementary enrollment drops.
Once the board receives the state budget, any surplus will go towards special education program funding first. One of the city’s goals is to hire new special education faculty.
This is not the first time that the budget has been stretched into June. Members recalled that it also happened during Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s first year in office. The House, Senate and first-year Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger failed to get on the same page with the budget during this spring’s General Assembly session and haven’t come to an agreement on a spending plan in a special session since then.
“In the meantime, we need better from Richmond,” Howley wrote in the email to school staff. “I fully understand that developing a state budget involves difficult decisions, competing priorities, and complicated negotiations. I also recognize that government processes do not always move perfectly on schedule. However, this delay is irresponsibly late and has placed school divisions and municipalities across the Commonwealth in extraordinarily difficult positions.”
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