If you had asked Jenna Rowe a month ago whether she could ever see herself as an expert and an advocate, navigating the intricacies of state budgets and other legislative issues, you might have been greeted with a puzzled expression.
But, then again, as a parent, you do a lot of things that you never expected to do.
Ever since May 13, when Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed the $188 billion budget passed by the General Assembly, the Cobbs Creek mother of four has been hard at work, lobbying legislators and fighting plans to gut a state program that had guaranteed eight semesters of college education at Virginia colleges and universities to spouses and dependents of Gold Star and 90 percent permanently disabled veterans, as determined by the Veterans Administration.
This act of “legislation by budget line,” as Rowe called it, would undo a program first established nearly 30 years ago, a commitment the state made to the families of America’s military who sacrificed in times of war, and sometimes...