Hope Scholarship Supports Students With Learning Disabilities But Poses Threat To State Budget

By Jules Ogden

Updated on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024 at 1 p.m.

The Hope Scholarship program has been at the center of statewide debates about public school funding and educational freedom. Critics of the program are concerned about its diversion of funding from public schools, while proponents see the program as an opportunity to individualize education for their children’s needs.

Katie Switzer, who lives in Charleston, said the program is the only way her daughter with learning disabilities can access the therapies and tutoring she needs to be successful.

“When she’s around a lot of kids, she has trouble getting the words out fast enough to speak out,” Switzer said. “So she has done really well with homeschool and doing online or small group kind of classes, through homeschool co-ops.”

Switzer’s daughter has a condition called ataxia of speech, which she said is often associated with dyslexia.

The Hope Scholarship is a West Virginia education savings account (ESA) program. The program redirects eligible family’s state taxpayer dollars from public schools to a personal savings account that they can use to make permitted purchases such as private school tuition or homeschooling materials when they leave the public school system. 

Switzer said she likes the program because it allows her to create a more individualized education plan for her children. She said the program benefits children with different learning styles or learning disabilities. Some students might learn better from individualized or hands-on instruction, which isn’t always possible in public schools. 

“That’s one of the biggest benefits of it is allowing people to find different educational models that fit them and suit their family, their kids, theory values and their special needs,” Switzer said. 

The Hope Scholarship is administered through the office of the state treasurer, Riley Moore. According to Jared Hunt, communications director for the state Treasurer’s office, nearly one-third of scholarship recipients for the 2023-24 academic year are using their funds for services or non-public individualized instruction like Switzer.

The other two-thirds use it for non-public schools. 

“As of Jan. 12, 2024, there were 3,806 Hope students enrolled in a nonpublic school according to our online portal, which would correspond to roughly 67% of our total Awarded Hope Scholarship students for 23-24 at that time. The program is roughly 2/3 nonpublic school and 1/3 individualized instructional plan students (which include home school or microschool students),” Hunt said in an email.

Students who left the public school system and received the Hope Scholarship were allotted $4,488.82 each during the 2023-24 academic year. The same blanket amount is allotted to each Hope recipient via the ESA regardless of how they plan to use it.

However, the state has to approve the expense whether it is used for private schooling, microschooling or services. Any leftover money is returned to the state. 

For example, during the 2022-23 academic year, $9,188,026.43 was transferred to student accounts. That year, $7,771,761.39 was spent by recipients, leaving $1,416,265.04 unutilized. Unused funds do not roll over to the next semester or academic year.

To be used for a service like the tutoring Switzer gets for her daughter, the service provider must be registered with the state and the Hope Scholarship program. 

Though critics of the program are concerned about the diversion of public school funding, public schools are eligible to register as Hope Scholarship providers., 

The scholarship’s provider handbook says that its funds may be used for public school services such as “individualized classes and extracurricular activities and programs” as long as the student is eligible to participate and eligible for other free services from the public schools if they are also attending private school. 

Before the Hope Scholarship, when students withdrew from public schools to become homeschooled, they forfeited their protections under the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act, which says that the public school system must provide services to students with disabilities. 

To date, no public school is registered as a Hope Scholarship provider on the program’s website. 

Shoot me a text when you’re done with this round, can be tonight or tomorrow idc

Leah Knotts homeschools her two daughters, Dahlia and Mercy. She’s been homeschooling her oldest, Dahlia, who is neurodivergent and exhibits signs of dyslexia since she was in early grade school. 

Mercy Knotts (right) uses a tablet to learn spelling with her mother Leah Knotts in Morgantown, West Virginia, on March 20, 2024. Mercy is a Hope Scholarship recipient and uses the funds to pay for learning tools like the tablet. 

Photo by Jules Ogden

Because she began homeschooling Dahlia before the implementation of the Hope Scholarship, she is currently ineligible for the scholarship. The Hope Scholarship, established in 2021, redirects funding from public schools, making only those enrolled at the time of and after its implementation eligible for the scholarship. 

However, by the 2026-27 academic year, the program’s eligibility requirements will expand, qualifying all students for the scholarship, regardless of whether they have ever been enrolled in the public school system. 

Knotts said that dyslexia tutoring is expensive and regular reading tutors and public schools often do not have the training or knowledge to aid children with dyslexia.

“The resources that the school system is using for kids with dyslexia, it’s a little behind,” Knotts said. “I’m hoping that we’ll get there, but that option just doesn’t look great right now. The Hope Scholarship,  if Dahlia was able to use it, we could use dyslexia tutoring, which is hundreds of dollars a month  

Mercy, Knott’s youngest, is not diagnosed as neurodivergent but similarly struggles to stay focused when doing her schoolwork. She is eligible for and receives the Hope Scholarship and uses it for a specialized curriculum to suit her needs. 

Knotts said that if Dahlia had been eligible for the scholarship, transitioning to homeschooling and making progress would have been smoother.

Critics of the program argue that the scholarship’s redirection of funding from the public schools is decreasing the quality of education and opportunities for those still enrolled.

Switzer and Knotts said they were concerned at first about the effect of the program on public schools. However, Switzer said that the program results in more per-pupil funding in public schools.

In West Virginia, public schools are funded through state, local and federal funding, according to Kelly Allen, the executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. 

When a student leaves the public school system with the Hope Scholarship, a public school only loses that student’s state taxpayer funding.  Some proponents of the scholarship argue that public schools should have more per-pupil funding, assuming federal and local funding remains the same regardless of enrollment declines.

“The public schools in West Virginia are struggling so much that I think they could benefit from having that additional per pupil funding and reducing their overhead, so they can improve the quality of the schooling,” Switzer said.

However, Allen said that though state taxpayer money is the only source of funding directly diverted from the public schools, enrollment declines could impact federal funding.

“While enrollment numbers don’t directly impact local property tax funding since it’s based on property values, the federal funding could decline as enrollment drops – though we’ve not teased that out yet,” Allen said in an email.

“A school’s costs do not decline in proportion with a student leaving,” Allen said. “For instance, if 20 students across 8 grade levels leave a school for the Hope Scholarship, that school receives $50,000 less per year but each classroom only lost 2-3 students–not enough to eliminate a class or lay off a teacher without consequences to the remaining students.”

During the expansion, students who never attended the public school system and are not accounted for in state tax and federal funding will become eligible to receive the Hope Scholarship, meaning those funds must come from somewhere other than the public schools. 

Allen said that if all current non-public school students take advantage of their new eligibility in 2026, the state could see $100 million in scholarship requests on its budget. 

“The argument now is like, ‘This isn’t costing the state budget any new money because it’s students who are already funded through the school aid formula.’ And then they’re just taking that money and using it in the private school system,” Allen said. “When an additional 30-40,000 children who are already home schooled or in private schools, who are not accounted for in the school aid formula, become eligible, the program will cost an additional $150-200 million in the state budget annually. This is money that won’t be available to support additional social workers, pay raises for teachers, or a myriad of other needs in our schools that serve more than 90% of the state’s children.”

Even before the expansion, the decreased number of students resulted in a decrease in personnel. According to the report by Allen, 364 education personnel across the state are no longer funded due to enrollment declines onset by the Hope Scholarship.

“Proponents are just kind of speaking in hypotheticals where we’re seeing real-life impacts in our school districts, have hard decisions having to be made because of dollars that are leaving the school district due to the Hope Scholarship,” Allen said.

Allen said that school districts across the state are already issuing Reduction-in-Force letters to support staff as a result of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding running out and enrollment continues to decline, in part by Hope.

She said other states with similar voucher programs are seeing financial implications. According to reporting by the National Education Association earlier this year, Arizona public high school students receive less funding than their voucher program peers following the expansion of the state’s program with $320 million in unbudgeted costs projected to continue funding the program.

Jules Ogden discussed her reporting on this story with Chris Schulz, West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s North Central/Morgantown reporter, in the August 6, 2024 episode of West Virginia Morning.

*Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect additional statements from the Center on Budget and Policy regarding the financial impact of the planned expansion of the Hope Scholarship.