Virginia

Overview

During the 2022-2023 school year, Virginia’s two preschool programs enrolled a total of 24,169 preschool-age children, an increase of 1,893 from the prior year. State spending for both programs totaled $124,134,116, and an additional $16,282,075 in federal recovery funds supported Mixed Delivery, up $15,133,853 (12%) total, adjusted for inflation, since last year. State spending per child (including federal recovery funds) for both programs equaled $5,810 in 2022-2023, up $186 from 2021-2022, adjusted for inflation. State spending per child for the Virgina Preschool Initiative (VPI) equaled $5,295 and Mixed Delivery equaled $12,067 (including recovery funds). Virginia VPI met 6 of 10 quality standards benchmarks, while Mixed Delivery met 4 of 10.

What's New

In 2022, the state budget included an additional $16 million for VPI and increased per pupil rates that are benchmarked based on the standards of quality. Starting during the 2022-23 school year, the per pupil rates will be based on the biannually re-benchmarked rate, which follows the same model of basing costs on standards of quality as K–12. This change led to a significant increase in the per child rate and will ensure that the VPI rate remains comparable to other grade levels.

Virginia also increased Early Childhood Care & Education (ECCE) slot reimbursement rates for its Mixed Delivery preschool program to 100% of the Cost of Quality beginning with the 2023-2024 program year. While increases in teacher compensation are not required in Mixed Delivery, the Mixed Delivery model and the increases in the funding formula allow and incentivize site leaders to invest in classroom and center stability by increasing compensation for teachers in Mixed Delivery classrooms to levels that approach public school teachers’ salary and benefits as part of the strategy to address Virginia’s ECCE workforce challenges.

Most of the Mixed Delivery funding came from federal relief funds in 2022-2023 and continues to do so in 2023-2024. Sustaining recent expansions to Mixed Delivery is dependent upon receiving additional state funding in the 2025-2026 state biennial budget.

In December 2022, Virginia was awarded a federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B–5) one-year planning grant for $4 million. The state is using the funding to update the statewide ECCE needs assessment and strategic plan, as well as implement key ECCE priorities related to quality early learning settings and supporting the ECCE workforce.

Background

The Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI) began in 1995 to serve at-risk 4-year-olds not enrolled in existing preschool programs. During the 2022-2023 school year, VPI programs operated in 96% of eligible school divisions. Programs are required to operate for a minimum of three hours per day, though 95% of children attend full-day programs throughout the school year. VPI is funded by an annual legislative appropriation of state general funds and a required local match based on the local composite index. The local match is capped at half the per-pupil amount. Funding for VPI is available to school divisions where there are at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds who are not served by Head Start.

The Mixed Delivery program began during the 2016-2017 school year and was included in the State of Preschool Yearbook for the first time in 2022. This program is administered by the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF) as a public/private partnership and provides publicly funded early childhood care and education (ECCE) services in licensed, non-school-based and non-faith-based private ECCE settings. Eligible children are those who have been identified as at-risk for entering kindergarten without the necessary social and academic skills for success. From its inception until 2020, Mixed Delivery was designed to test innovative strategies that addressed community-level barriers to preschool access for families whose needs and preferences were not met by the school-based VPI program. In 2020, the Mixed Delivery program shifted to an access model that more fully covered (and in 2023-2024, fully covers) the cost of quality for full-day, year-round services for eligible children.

During the 2022-2023 school year, all VPI and Mixed Delivery programs were invited to participate in VQB5, Virginia’s quality measurement and improvement system, and 76% of public schools and 100% of registered Mixed Delivery programs participated. The new unified system uses measures of teacher-child interactions and curriculum implementation to support improvement across all publicly funded birth-to-five program and will be required for all publicly funded birth-to-five programs by Fall 2023.

Virginia’s overall support for state-funded preschool, including enrollment and funding for both VPI and Mixed Delivery, is depicted in the first two sections of this state profile. The third section focuses solely on VPI, and the fourth section on Mixed Delivery.