Henrico delegates, senators seek SOL reform, social media restrictions and more in 2025 legislative session

Virginia’s General Assembly convenes today to kick off the 2025 legislative session, with delegates and senators from Henrico County seeking to push through several education bills.

In its legislative agenda, the Henrico School Board urged legislators to increase state funding for K-12 education in this year’s budget, especially in the areas of teacher recruitment, mental health staff, English learner services, and school security.

“[Our agenda] really centers around funding and removing barriers,” Brookland District school board representative Kristi Kinsella said at a recent meeting. “And I would just like to once again remind every legislator in the state that everyone ran on education, so please fund it and fix it.”

Del. Rodney Willett (D-58th District) said that he and other Henrico legislators will advocate to set more funding towards education this year, but that they may face an upward battle due to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s focus on cutting taxes with this year’s budget.

“There’s money available to more fully fund the things that need it – teacher salaries, counselor supports, mental health supports – those are all in that bucket,” Willett said. “Now what’s conflicting with that is the administration pushing for tax breaks…and don’t get me wrong, we have all sorts of needs to reform our tax code. But we have fires to put out here. We’ve got schools to take care of.”

In his proposed amendments, Youngkin laid out plans for tax eliminations and exemptions, as well as $1 billion in new education funding, including boosts to private school scholarships and lab schools.

Among some of the education initiatives Henrico legislators hope to pass this year include testing reform, cell phone and social media restrictions, decreasing suspensions and expulsions, and expanding school mental health services and staff.

SOL reform

Sen. Schulyer VanValkenburg (D-16th District) wants to take a “big shot at reforming how we test,” starting with Virginia’s Standards of Learning exams. 

VanValkenburg’s bill would shift the current SOL exams, most of which are multiple choice, to emphasize more skills such as writing, critical thinking, comprehension and analysis. While tests would still have some multiple choice questions, more sections would have writing prompts, document-based questions, and comparison questions.

Rather than the common debate over having less tests or more tests, the focus should be on having high-quality tests that go beyond just basic memorization, said VanValkenburg, who is also a history teacher at Glen Allen High School.

“If you look at our SOLs, taking U.S. History as an example, it’s just kind of 60 multiple choice questions that are arbitrarily chosen from the curriculum and nobody understands what parts of the curriculum are going to be emphasized on the tests,” he said. “All you’re doing is kind of memorizing random facts.”

VanValkenburg’s bill would also shift SOL testing closer to the end of the school year, require more transparency on what material the tests will cover, and place guardrails on local assessments that replace certain SOL tests. The key will be getting enough funding behind the proposed reform, he said. 

“When the rubber hits the road on this, it’s funding, and you know, that’s a fight,” VanValkenburg said. “We’ll see if I’m able to get it. Because traditionally Virginia hasn’t funded good tests and that’s why we haven’t had them.”

Combatting teacher shortages

VanValkenburg also will be carrying a bill to decrease the amount of non-academic training teachers are required to complete. Teachers’ work environment, including increased workload, has been one of the major reasons many staff have left the profession, he said. 

“You always hear about teachers and staff at schools talking about the increased amount of work they have to do outside of the classroom that’s not related to teaching,” he said. “A lot of people once they start teaching, it’s not the money that gets them to leave, it’s the environment.”

Del. Delores McQuinn (D-81st District) will be carrying a bill sponsored by Henrico Schools that aims to extend the allotted time period school districts can employ long-term substitute teachers from 90 days to 180 days. Facing hundreds of teacher vacancies, HCPS and other school districts have heavily relied on long-term substitutes to fill vacant positions.

“It adds consistency to the educational opportunities that young people will be having and they’ll be much more familiar with an individual rather than having substitute teachers come in and out,” McQuinn said. 

When it comes to recruiting and retaining teachers, the biggest issue is pay, Willett said, especially with the threat of teachers leaving the industry for better paying jobs. While a bill that would have raised teacher pay to the national average was vetoed last year, he hopes that the effort will be continued this session. 

“At the end of the day, the biggest issue we face is workforce and attracting and retaining teachers,” he said. “I want to make sure that we’ve got teachers’ backs and the best way to show that at least initially is paying them what they’re worth.”

Phones and social media

While the initiative failed last year, VanValkenburg will be reintroducing his bill tackling addictive social media feeds this session. The bill would prohibit social media platforms from employing addictive feeds for users under the age of 18.

Social media feeds have become one of the biggest distractions for students both inside and outside of the classroom, VanValkenburg said. 

“When you think about what are some of the things that most draw students’ attention away from their work, it’s oftentimes addictive feeds,” he said. “It’s really problematic for their academics, it’s really problematic for their mental health, and it’s really problematic for their social health, having friends and work and balancing your life.”

VanValkenburg, along with Sen. Lashrecse Aird (D-13th District) and Sen. Lamont Bagby (D-14th District), also has signed onto a bill that will further restrict cell phones within school classrooms by requiring local school boards to develop phone policies that limit student distraction.

Henrico Schools’ current phone policy requires students to put away phones during class time but allows phones to be used between classes and during lunch periods.

School discipline

McQuinn will also be reintroducing her restorative schools initiative this year after the bill was vetoed last session, but with a few changes this time around. 

The bill initially aimed to require all Virginia schools to use at least one restorative disciplinary practice before suspending or expelling a student, except with more serious offenses such as weapon possession. This year, McQuinn hopes to establish a two-year pilot program implementing restorative practices for schools with 40% or more of their student body receiving free or reduced lunch.

Last school year, 65% of students in HCPS were eligible for free or reduced lunch, making the program especially relevant to the district, McQuinn said.

“This is one of the bills that I know would be relevant to certain schools that I represent in my district as well as places across the Commonwealth,” she said. “All of us are trying to find some answers to keeping young people in school…and we know that if they’re not in school, it’s difficult for them to learn.”

McQuinn also hopes to emphasize how restorative and trauma-informed practices will help prevent students from further misbehaviors, after concerns were brought up last year about how keeping misbehaving students in school could overwhelm teachers. 

“This is not about just keeping kids necessarily in a classroom and dealing with the same behaviors that teachers were dealing with before, this is giving them the support they need in the classroom to help address some of the social, emotional, and cognitive issues that young people often deal with,” she said.

Mental health

Willett, who sits on a select committee for rural healthcare, hopes to support a bill that will boost mental health telehealth resources at schools across the state, especially schools in rural areas where access to mental health providers is limited.

Henrico Schools began offering a free teletherapy service through Hazel Health to high school students this past fall and plans to expand the service to middle schoolers.

Willett also hopes to support a reintroduced bill that will decrease school counselor ratios, allowing counselors to manage a smaller number of students and therefore have more time for each student and their needs. 

Gun safety

Willett, along with VanValkenburg, successfully passed through Lucia’s Law last session, named in honor of slain Henrico teenager Lucia Bremer, which imposes more consequences on parents who do not safely secure their firearms away from minors who pose a threat. But that bill marked one of the only gun safety bills that successfully passed last year, Willet said.

“That was one of the only gun safety measures that the governor did not veto last session. He vetoed dozens of others,” he said. “It’s very frustrating because a lot of those measures would directly impact students and school safety.”

While Willett thinks there is a chance that some gun safety bills may be reintroduced this session, he is more confident that they will be resurrected in 2026 at the end of Youngkin’s term.

“Most of them got vetoed last year, they’ll probably get vetoed again this year,” he said. “Now some people say you still put it in just to make a statement…but the bottom line is it’s the same governor with the same veto pen.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.