In November 1997, a committee reporting to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors put forward a tuition tax credit proposal aimed at allowing parents greater school choice and easing the burden of the fast-growing county population on public school classrooms and infrastructure. The state Board of Education demonstrated interest in school choice in late 1997 by inviting presentations by national groups in support of school choice and by Virginians promoting tuition tax credit proposals in Loudoun and Rappahannock Counties. The bill died in committee. Most observers believe that a 1997 trip by key legislators to observe operational charter schools in Boston helped gain their support for the measure. The law is considered very weak by charter school advocates as well.
Charters are limited to two per school division.
The companion bill in the Senate is S.B. 866. However, the bill never cleared the education committee of either the House of Delegates or the Senate. Position of the Governor Governor James Gilmore, a Republican, campaigned on reducing public school class size by increasing the number of public school teachers. In his first press conference after the election, the governor noted his willingness to consider innovative measures to improve children's education, including school choice. At a meeting in November 1998, he called for giving parents the choice of where their children go to school.