Fifteen Yeses, Thirty-Two Nos: Virginia Splits on a Penny for School Buildings

Same tax, same purpose, two completely different Virginias. On Tuesday, November 3, forty-seven Virginia cities and counties asked their voters the same question in local words: may we add up to one percent to the local sales tax, with every dollar legally locked to public school construction and major renovation? By the end of the night, fifteen localities had said yes and thirty-two had said no, according to The Richmonder’s statewide count of the unofficial returns — sometimes in neighboring jurisdictions sharing a border. Today’s Virginia Deep Dive reports the results locality by locality.

The sharpest contrast sat around Richmond. The City of Richmond passed its measure easily. Thirty minutes south, Chesterfield County produced the closest big result of the night: yes won with 50.47 percent in the final election-night tally, with provisional ballots still outstanding — close enough, The Richmonder notes, that a recount could still be called. Right next door, rural Powhatan County rejected the same tax with just 32 percent of voters in favor. Three adjoining jurisdictions, three verdicts: a comfortable yes, a coin-flip yes, and a landslide no.

Localities rushed to ask because the buildings case is documented. WHRO reports that a 2022 report found more than half of Virginia’s schools are more than fifty years old, and that a 2025 report from the 21st Century School Fund found Virginia invested about $1.3 billion in capital improvement while needing about $2.6 billion more every year just to keep pace. The state provides no dedicated funding stream for this work. Eight localities received similar authority in 2020, and every referendum held under it succeeded. The statewide version took effect July 1, 2026; jurisdictions had about a month to get onto the November ballot, and forty-seven made it.

One restriction shapes everything that follows, and it is the sentence to remember: not one dollar of this tax can pay a teacher, a paraprofessional, a therapist, or any other operating cost. It builds and renovates buildings, and it finances that work — nothing else. The services written into an individualized education program are delivered inside buildings, and those legal duties are owed in all forty-seven localities this morning exactly as they were on Monday. What changed is the condition of the buildings in which fifteen divisions will now try to deliver them, and the size of the repair backlog the other thirty-two still carry.

Takeaway: Do not read Tuesday as Virginia voting for or against school funding. Voters answered a narrower question — whether a local sales tax may be used, for buildings only — and they answered it locality by locality. In the fifteen yes localities, watch the bond plans and capital lists; in the thirty-two no localities, the backlog numbers above are still the starting point for the next conversation.

Sources: The Richmonder’s statewide count of the unofficial November 3, 2026 returns; WHRO reporting on the school construction tax and Virginia’s capital backlog — all as covered in today’s episode, which publishes its sources in its episode description.