The numbers tell a story of a county increasingly going it alone on public education.
Henrico’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to send $789 million to the county’s public schools in the coming fiscal year—a $25 million increase that will come almost entirely from local coffers. State aid, which once formed the backbone of Virginia’s commitment to public education, barely moved. Local dollars will account for nearly 98 percent of the new funding.
The $1.4 billion general fund budget for fiscal year 2026-27 passed with supervisors delivering pointed remarks about what they called a misinformation campaign surrounding county support for Henrico County Public Schools. Some School Board members and community advocates have pushed the narrative that the county isn’t doing enough for education. Supervisors weren’t having it.
“We are funding our schools,” the message from the dais made clear, though the frustration underneath was unmistakable.
The tension reflects a broader shift playing out across Virginia’s suburban counties. As state legislators in Richmond redirect priorities—and dollars—elsewhere, localities like Henrico find themselves making harder choices about property tax rates, public safety spending, and infrastructure just to keep classroom funding steady. It’s a dynamic that has strained relationships between county governments and school systems that technically operate under the same tent but increasingly compete for the same finite pool of local revenue.
For Henrico’s 51,000 students, the budget maintains current programming and staffing levels while accounting for rising costs in transportation, utilities, and employee benefits. What it doesn’t include is the kind of transformative investment some education advocates have demanded—additional counselors, reduced class sizes, expanded pre-K access.
The state’s declining share of education funding has been decades in the making. Virginia’s Local Composite Index, the formula that determines how much each locality must contribute to schools, has consistently pushed more of the burden onto fast-growing suburban counties with healthy commercial tax bases. Henrico, home to Innsbrook, Short Pump’s retail corridor, and a growing logistics sector, qualifies as “wealthy” by the state’s metrics—even as individual families struggle with the same inflation squeezing budgets everywhere.
Supervisors will likely face continued pressure from both directions: school advocates demanding more investment and taxpayers wary of rising property assessments translating into higher bills. The approved budget represents the county’s answer for now—a significant commitment to education, funded overwhelmingly by the people who live here.
What remains unresolved is the larger question of who should pay for public schools in Virginia. For Henrico, the state has quietly provided an answer: you’re on your own.
- Henrico’s fiscal year 2026-27 budget allocates $789 million to county public schools, a $25 million increase
- Local funding accounts for nearly 98 percent of the additional school dollars as state aid remains flat
- Supervisors publicly pushed back against claims that the county underfunds education