Quick answer
Virginia lawmakers are considering a proposal that would make licensed school nurses a statewide staffing requirement rather than an optional local service. The proposal is still several steps from becoming law, and the available public record does not yet show what it would cost Virginia Beach or other Hampton Roads school divisions.
What happened
The School Health Services Committee discussed the draft at its September 23 meeting. As currently described, it would require school boards to provide at least one licensed nurse in each public school building, with a staffing standard tied to one nurse per 325 students. The requirement would begin July 1, 2028. Districts facing nurse shortages could seek two-year waivers after documenting good-faith hiring efforts. The committee is scheduled to decide November 18 whether to recommend the proposal for the 2027 General Assembly session. [1]
That timing matters for civic literacy: this is not yet a bill passed by the General Assembly, and it is not a mandate in effect today.
What Virginia law requires now
Current Virginia law gives school boards authority to employ school nurses, physicians and other health professionals, but it does not require a licensed nurse in every building. The law says school boards may strive to provide nursing services at a ratio of at least one nurse per 1,000 students. [2]
The School Health Services Committee itself is an advisory body in the legislative branch. State law charges it with reviewing proposals that would require local school boards to provide health services and submitting findings and recommendations to the General Assembly and governor. [3]
If the nurse proposal advances in November, it would still have to move through the normal legislative process in 2027 before it could become law.
The statewide baseline
Virginia Department of Health data show that the state is not starting from zero.
For the 2024-2025 school year, licensed nurse staffing had the capacity to cover about 90 percent of Virginia public schools: registered-nurse staffing covered about 70 percent, and licensed-practical-nurse staffing about 20 percent. That left an estimated 10 percent coverage gap statewide. [4]
VDH also reports that school health staff handled 7,447,814 student clinic visits during that school year, including 61,850 mental-health visits, and administered 3,017,385 medications. About 54 percent of Virginia students reported having a primary care provider. [4]
Those figures describe statewide capacity and activity. They do not show that every school without a dedicated nurse lacks health services altogether, nor do they establish how many new positions the current draft would ultimately require.
Virginia Beach starts from a different position
Virginia Beach City Public Schools says each school clinic is staffed with a full-time registered nurse. The division also maintains a public roster listing nurses assigned across its elementary, middle, high and specialty schools, along with resource nurses and health-services staff. [5][6]
That means the local question is not simply whether Virginia Beach currently provides school nursing. It does.
The more important unresolved question is how the draft’s proposed staffing ratio would apply to Virginia Beach’s larger campuses and specialty facilities. A requirement tied to one nurse per 325 students could produce a different staffing calculation than a rule requiring one nurse in each building.
The public sources reviewed for this article do not provide a Virginia Beach-specific estimate of how many additional licensed nurses, if any, would be required under the draft as written.
Analysis: what would actually change locally
The documented facts are that Virginia Beach already reports full-time registered-nurse staffing in its school clinics, while the state is considering a more prescriptive statewide minimum.
The analytical issue is the difference between a local staffing model and a statewide legal floor.
A statewide requirement could have limited effect on some Virginia Beach campuses if existing staffing satisfies the final standard. It could have a larger effect if the final legislation uses a student-to-nurse ratio that requires more than one licensed nurse at larger schools, changes how specialty centers are counted, or limits the use of waivers.
None of those local effects can be calculated reliably from the draft information now available.
The same caution applies to cost. The sources reviewed do not include a final statewide fiscal-impact estimate for the proposal, and there is no enacted funding formula attached to it yet. Any estimate of Virginia Beach’s additional payroll cost at this stage would therefore be premature.
What to watch next
The next decision point is the School Health Services Committee’s November 18 meeting. If members recommend the proposal, the next useful records will be the introduced 2027 legislation, any fiscal-impact statement, the proposed state-local funding structure, and school-division estimates of positions needed to comply.
For Coastal Virginia readers, those documents will answer the questions the current draft cannot: whether Virginia Beach would need additional nurses, whether Chesapeake and neighboring divisions face larger staffing gaps, and how much of any new requirement would be financed by the state versus local school budgets.
Sources
- Virginia Mercury, “Virginia health committee considers mandating licensed nurses in every school,” September 25, 2026 — Virginia Mercury. Virginia Mercury, “Virginia health committee considers mandating licensed nurses in every school,” September 25, 2026
- Code of Virginia § 22.1-274, School health services — Code of Virginia § 22.1-274. Code of Virginia § 22.1-274, School health services
- Code of Virginia § 30-409, School Health Services Committee; purpose — Code of Virginia § 30-409. Code of Virginia § 30-409, School Health Services Committee; purpose
- VDH, 2024–25 School Health Data Dashboard downloadable dataset — Virginia Department of Health. Statewide school-nurse staffing, visits and medication data for the 2024–25 school year.
- Virginia Beach City Public Schools, Health Services & Student Medication — Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Virginia Beach City Public Schools, Health Services & Student Medication
- Virginia Beach City Public Schools, School Nurse Roster — Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Virginia Beach City Public Schools, School Nurse Roster