Though this sounds nice, I have to wonder how it would work. This bill doesn't provide any funding, and education is funded almost entirely with local dollars.

That's not exactly correct Waklo...the vast majority of small, rural counties in this state acquire the majority of their funding from the state and federal governments. The county that I teach in has an annual budget of a little over 20 million a year, of which 13 million comes from the State of Virginia. Which simply cannot generate enough local tax revenue to adequately fund the schools. There is already a huge disparity in educational funding of communiities simply because some counties and cities have a huge tax base (all those Wal-Marts and malls). It makes you question why a childs education and the money spent on them should be dependent on where they live.

Interesting -- I only know my own locality (Albemarle County). But the fact remains that there are enormous numbers of schools in this state who are being forced to pay a particular salary when they don't have the money to do it, and the state isn't providing the money. And, if anything, it's even worse for your county: they're requiring you to pay more, but not giving you any more money to do so. That means, of course, less teachers.

Requires that the state average teacher salary not be less than the annual national average teacher salary in order to ensure high-quality instructional personnel in the public schools.