State Leaders Celebrate Hope Scholarship For All

Five years into the Hope Scholarship program and, as of Monday, it is available to every child in the state. Previously, the state’s school voucher program required students to be enrolled in public school for at least 45 days to be approved. The Hope Scholarship program provides financial assistance to qualifying families of K-12 students to be used for tuition, homeschool curriculum and other approved educational expenses.

As of Monday, expanded eligibility allows existing nonpublic school and traditional homeschool students to apply.

State Treasurer Larry Pack, who currently administers the program, joined Gov. Patrick Morrisey and Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, to recognize the milestone. 

The Hope Scholarship allows money the state would spend on a student in public school to follow the student if they instead go to private school or homeschool. 

“I want to report to you that starting yesterday, new parents, students can start to sign up for the ‘26-’27 year,” Pack said. “We’ve had about 14,000 students so far sign up for the program. In the last 24 hours, over 3,000 students have signed up. So people are really actively participating in this program.” 

Projections from the treasurer’s office indicate that the Hope Scholarship will cost the state $230 million for the 2026-2027 school year. 

“It’s easy to forget that in 2021, nothing like this existed in the country,” Rucker said. “There were education savings accounts in certain states that were for particular populations, very, very specialized, very, very limited.”

She said at the time she was envious of those programs, but questioned, “What about that child outside of that geographic boundary? What about that child who doesn’t quite fit that criteria you set in code? What about that child whose parents make $1 over this artificial cap that you’ve put in?”

“We always try to improve and reform public education, but for those who that doesn’t fit, that’s not what they need. Let’s try to ensure they also get what they need,” Rucker said. “And I am more proud of this than probably anything else I’ve done in my life up to this point, outside of my five beautiful children.”

Morrisey tied the Hope Scholarship to economic development in the state. 

“I’ve talked a lot about the economic ‘Backyard Brawl’ over the last couple of years, and the reason that’s so important is whether we like it or not, we’re in an economic competition with all the states that we touch,” he said. “Being in a place where we have the best school choice system around matters. It actually keeps kids here and draws more people to West Virginia when you combine that with what we’re trying to do in terms of cutting income taxes and to slice red tape and to invest in infrastructure.”

Morrisey said that on top of school choice programs, it is also possible to “constantly improve our public schools and make sure that educational attainment is great for everyone across the state.”

He said the House Finance Committee is moving “our house letters bill that’s going to help public education today. That’s good, too. The science of reading, improving math rates, this is all excellent.” 

The committee advanced House Bill 5412, the Future Ready Education Act, Tuesday morning to the full House. The bill requires all kindergarten through fifth grade teachers providing literacy instruction to be trained by the West Virginia Department of Education in the science of reading.

“We need to be looking at every way to increase excellence in West Virginia,” he said. “We know that Hope works. We believe that people that go through this process are going to be vast contributors to our society. We know it’s great for families. We know it’s very attractive to get more people to come in.”