As a former student who nearly ended my life twice it’s nice to see this.

I would ask that you would stop passing bills without considering the time it will take away from school personnel by adding another task to their already full plate. It is also not helpful to burden taxpayers in local communities with all the unfunded mandates. Also, why would we allow any Virginia students replace Virginia history and civic requirements with International Baccalaureate coursework? If they are students in Virginia, they should know the history of their state and their civic duties as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Thank you for your consideration. Karen M Wirsing

We have the nursing staff each district wants to hire. How about using these expanded funds to help kids struggling with learning at the pre-K level so gaps can be closed. Also working with students struggling with math and reading.

Opposition to SB33E SB33E expands the use of At-Risk Program funds to hire additional nursing staff, but it does so without providing new funding, effectively shifting healthcare responsibilities onto schools already struggling to meet academic needs. At-Risk funds are limited and intended to support interventions like tutoring, dropout prevention, and language services. Redirecting these dollars to medical staffing risks crowding out proven academic supports while creating new expectations and liability for divisions that are not healthcare providers. Wealthier divisions may be able to expand services, but smaller and rural systems will face difficult tradeoffs, widening inequities across the Commonwealth. Unfunded expansions that divert resources from instruction and shift medical responsibilities onto schools are not the right solution.

Everyone wants students to be safe. But SB39 pushes schools toward surveillance technology that monitors student activity and flags them as threats, creating serious risks. These systems collect sensitive data families may not even know is being stored. They can misread jokes, writing, or emotions and wrongly label students as dangerous, leading to stigma, discipline, or unnecessary law enforcement involvement. At the same time, state-driven “best practices” could pressure local divisions into costly systems that drain funds from what actually works such as counselors, threat assessment teams, and trusted adult relationships. Virginia already has proven, human-centered safety strategies. We should invest in people, not algorithms.