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One local school budget is approved and three others are on the table, but the decisions made by superintendents and school boards now could be obsolete in a matter of weeks.

I talked last week to Bill Bosher, former state superintendent for public instruction and school chief in both Henrico and Chesterfield counties. Bosher was wisely headed south ahead of the snowstorm, but he shared some of his thoughts for an overview of the school budget situation I’ve written for tomorrow’s Times-Dispatch (you know, print).

“They would all like to wait as long as they can to find out what the state is going to do,” Bosher said of the superintendents, several of whom have met quietly with him as they contemplate some ugly budget math.

We should know soon exactly how bad it’s going to be for school divisions across Virginia.

Both houses of the General Assembly face a deadline of Feb. 21 – that’s two weeks from today – for adopting their versions of the state’s 2010-2012 budget. That budget is likely to include $1.9 million less in spending than the one introduced in December by Gov. Tim Kaine, who’s now back home in North Side shoveling snow.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, who carried his wife across the Executive Mansion threshold a few weeks ago, doesn’t have any appetite for higher taxes, and neither does the Republican-controlled House of Delegates.

That’s not stopping teacher groups and legislators from raising the issue of revenue rather than expenditures. The Virginia Education Association and Commonwealth Institute are holding a press conference on Monday with Sen. Mamie Locke about her proposal to raise the state income tax by 3 percent for 3 years, among other things, to pay for funding the Standards of Quality that Virginia mandates for local school divisions. The divisions pay a lot more than they get from the state to meet the standards even in good years, but this year the bottom has dropped out of state aid and local tax revenues.

Theoretically, the legislature could raise taxes to help fill that $4.2 billion budget hole.

Every street in Richmond could be clear of snow on Monday morning. To paraphrase Sen. Dick Saslaw in today’s Times-Dispatch, it ain’t going to happen.

Local governments want the General Assembly to think twice about passing legislation that costs them money while the state slashes aid for local services.

The two largest lobbying groups for localities — the Virginia Municipal League and the Virginia Association of Counties — asked Speaker of the House William J. Howell last week to direct committee chairs to hold legislation that could harm local revenues or expand the services that local governments must provide.

“Local governments do not have the revenue resources to take on new responsibilities or to see their revenue further diminished,” wrote VML Executive Director R. Michael Amyx and VACo Executive Director James D. Campbell in a letter on Jan. 25.

The letter was aimed at taking advantage of an edict already issued to committee chairs in the House of Delegates to hold off on approving legislation that could have a fiscal impact on the state budget, which faces a shortfall of about $4.2 billion over two years.

Howell hasn’t responded yet, but his chief of staff, G. Paul Nardo, said today the Speaker and his staff are reviewing a list of 39 proposed bills and resolutions that the localities cited as potentially harmful. “I presume we’ll having something to them next week,” Nardo said.

Nardo also acknowledged that the Assembly needs to think twice before passing legislation that raises local costs in a tight budget time. He said the House leadership also is open to relaxing some state requirements that cost localities money. After all, local governments are going to get a lot less state aid come July 1.

“We’re going to reduce spending,” Nardo said, “and people aren’t going to like it.”