When the 2015 General Assembly session starts Wednesday, state Sen. John Miller (D-1) will be there ready to take up bills dealing with education, his biggest cause.
“Education bills are most important to me,” the two-term Senator said in an interview with WYDaily. He represents the Senate of Virginia’s first district, which includes the City of Williamsburg, parts of James City and York counties and parts of Newport News, Hampton and Suffolk.
Miller’s work to reform education last year slashed the number of Standards of Learning tests by five, changed how school boards deal with tied votes and delayed the implementation of the A-to-F grading system for Virginia schools.
During this year’s abbreviated session, an election year and one in which the General Assembly must confront a more than $300 million budget shortfall, Miller wants to continue working with education-related bills.
At the top of his agenda is a bill that would reduce the number of Standards of Learning tests to 17, which is the minimum required by federal law. The standardized tests are issued at schools across the state to measure student achievement.
“We test way too much,” Miller said. “We spend too much time teaching to the test. We spend too much time on tests that are all about memorization and not critical thinking skills.”
An effort involving Miller and several other legislators resulted in five less Standards of Learning tests for elementary and middle school students. The new bill would direct the state Board of Education to craft a plan by next year to reduce the SOLs to the federal minimum. That way, the plan could be implemented over time to ensure nobody slips through the cracks.
“I don’t want to take a meat cleaver and do it all at once if we’re going to affect graduation requirements for students who are still in the pipeline,” he said.
Miller believes offering the federal minimum of 17 tests would leave a way to hold schools accountable without overburdening students. Under current law, students are required to take 29 tests from third grade through the end of high school.
“We’ve created such a stressful situation with so much emphasis on SOLs,” he said. “We hear stories all the time of kids who come in on SOL days and just melt down. There’s so much pressure, and there are so many tests.”
The reform effort last year also set in motion an SOL reform committee, which seeks to explore ways to reform the tests to better serve students.
Miller is also championing an SOL-reform bill that would extend to elementary and middle school students the right to an expedited retake of any SOL they are within 25 points of passing. The provision is currently afforded to high school students.
“A lot of times one or two kids failing a test brings the average of the school down,” he said. “So if a kid is close to passing and wants the opportunity, [let them retake the test].”
For military families, Miller is carrying a bill to require schools to ask whether a parent is in the military when a student is registered for school.
“It’s imperative that the teachers know which students in their class have parents in the military,” he said, noting how behavioral and other issues can sometimes be attributed to big changes in a child’s life, such as the deployment of an aircraft carrier with a parent on board.
Miller said the bill could also prove a boon to school divisions in the state, giving them a clearer picture of how many military-connected children attend their schools. That data could then be used to maximize federal impact aid — money paid to schools educating military children — and to apply for grants from the military.
During the new session, he will reintroduce a bill left in committee last year requiring 20 minutes of daily physical activity for students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Last year’s bill sought 30 minutes for students from kindergarten through eighth grade.
“Not every locality in Virginia allows children to have recess, as crazy as that may seem,” he said. “I don’t want it to be onerous, but I want kids to be active.”
In 2014, Miller chaired the Public Education subcommittee of the Education and Health Committee, a place where all bills dealing with K-12 education in Virginia must pass during their journey through the General Assembly. The assignment is an important one for an education-minded senator.
But since the last regular session of the General Assembly, control of the Senate has passed to the Republicans. Miller’s current committee assignments have dropped from five to three, and he is no longer a member of either the Public Education Subcommittee or the Education and Health Committee. Instead, he serves on Privileges and Elections, Local Government and Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources.
“The session is going to be difficult,” he said, mentioning the budget shortfall and the upcoming election in November, when every member of the General Assembly must face the voters.
During the WYDaily interview, Miller stopped short of announcing he is seeking re-election, but he did say he has every intention of running.
The election hangs over a session where several big-ticket discussions are likely to be had. Just like last year, Gov. Terry McAuliffe has included in his budget recommendations an expansion of Medicaid as prescribed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
Democrats say the expansion would bring healthcare to 400,000 uninsured Virginians and bring back to the state tax money already sent to the federal government, while Republicans are concerned the federal government could back out and leave the state on the hook to pay for the expanded service.
Miller supports an expansion of Medicaid, though the measure is likely to falter during the upcoming session. Even if it could clear the Senate, where the balance between Democrats and Republicans is almost split, it stands little chance of advancing in the Republican-dominated House of Delegates.
Miller said an expansion of Medicaid would inject $300 million into Virginia’s budget from the federal government.
“It doesn’t make sense to be cutting money from core services like mental health and public safety because we don’t want to accept the $300 million we would get for expanding Medicaid,” he said.
He advocates a plan that would expand Medicaid for at least two years, the time which the federal government is obligated by Obamacare to pay for all of the costs incurred by Virginia. After that, the law requires the federal government to pay for 90 percent of the cost.
“I don’t see why we can’t just try it for these next few years where it’s fully funded by the federal government,” he said. “Bring that tax money back to Virginia.”
Miller is also carrying a handful of other bills in the session.
He is a proponent of establishing an independent commission to draw the district lines for the House of Delegates, Senate of Virginia and U.S. House of Representatives. The work is currently done by the General Assembly.
“It is still the view of many in the General Assembly that we ought to be the ones drawing the lines,” he said. “I’m hoping that view is changing. We ought to not give the redistricting pen to people who have a vested interest in the outcome.”
Miller has introduced bills for several years seeking the independent commission. Last year, he changed his approach and introduced a bill seeking to ask on the 2014 election’s ballot whether Virginia voters would support the creation of an independent commission.
That bill passed the Senate on a 36 to 4 vote. It then went to the House of Delegates, where it was left behind in committee.
“My district is very artfully drawn,” he said. “I think if you put five reasonable people in a room, you get a much different district. We have one precinct in Newport News represented by three different delegates — that is crazy. We’re going to have 140 elections in November, and we’re going to know the outcome of 130 of them six months before the election.”
He also seeks to ban the use of direct-recording electronic voting machines except for disabled people who need them to vote. Another bill would no longer require voters age 65 or older to offer a reason for voting absentee.
“When you’re 65 or older, there are days when you just don’t feel like getting up and moving around all that much,” he said. “So I just want to give folks, and I’m one of them, the opportunity to say I don’t want to go stand in a line for two hours to vote.”
The 2015 General Assembly session begins Wednesday in Richmond.
