Richmond – As Virginia students head back to school this month, families that are already feeling cost-burdened by gas and groceries are having to make room in their budgets for rising prices on everything from glue sticks to new sneakers to college tuition bills. Nationally, the Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative project that the 2026-27 school year will cost families nearly $4,000 per child, roughly 10.7% more than last year, with typical school supply lists up 7.7% and packed-lunch costs up nearly 11%. Economists and retailers point to the same culprit driving much of the increase: tariffs on the imported paper, plastics, and electronics that make up most school supply lists.

The pain isn’t limited to K-12 families. A new annual report from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia found that tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates rose 3.4% this year, pushing the average cost above $15,300 annually. Room and board climbed 4.4%, and athletic fees, which now make up at least a third of auxiliary fees at most schools, jumped 5.5% statewide, with Old Dominion University and Virginia Tech hiking those fees by 13.7%. Community college students will pay an average of about $5,250 a year in tuition and fees, while four-year students face closer to $16,400 (before room and board.)

“Families in our community are getting squeezed at every stage of their kids’ education, from the first day of kindergarten to the day they walk across the stage at graduation,” said Judith Seltzer, Executive Director at Progress Virginia. “Parents are paying tariff-inflated prices on the lunch box they buy their kids, the food they pack in it, and the notebooks and crayons that their underfunded public schools need parents to provide. Parents are co-signing student loans with high interest rates and are using those funds to pay record tuition bills. While families are struggling to make ends meet, too many of our lawmakers in Richmond are treating affordability like a talking point and while avoiding policy decisions that would actually help our community. We have the tools to make school cost less for Virginia families, from a fair share tax on the ultra-wealthy to a tax on the data centers that have already extracted so much from us. These tools will allow us to fund our public K-12 schools and our public colleges so they don’t have to keep passing costs onto students. It’s past time for our elected officials to use the tools they have, and as legislators start gearing up for the 2027 session, we will make sure they can’t pass the buck on affordability yet again.”