Delegate Amanda Pasdon Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Forced Pooling Resurfaces in W.Va. Legislature

Two bills that both died on the final night of the 2015 legislative session, resurfaced Monday during interim meetings – forced pooling and public charter schools. Both ideas erupted in debate in 2015, but Monday’s discussions were calm and reflective – but not without some concerns.

The separate discussions Monday on forced pooling and charter schools were mostly on how to make these controversial pieces of legislation work for lawmakers and interested parties on both sides of the issues.

First, forced pooling –

Delegate Woody Ireland chairs the House Energy Committee and sponsored the forced pooling legislation during the 2015 session. He told his fellow lawmakers Monday they must do something about pooling, even if they don’t all agree.

Forced pooling works like this – When companies prepare to drill a well, they create a giant rectangle of land parcels and then negotiate with the mineral owners within that rectangle for their gas rights.

The 2015 bill would have allowed companies to force owners to sell their minerals if they could get 80 percent of the owners in their parcel to agree to the drilling. However, the 20 percent forced to sell would still get paid for their proportion of gas drilled.

Democrats and some tea party Republicans were strongly against the bill, even showing their discontent through demonstrations on the floor. On the final night, the bill died on a tie vote in the House.

Now, Delegate Ireland has proposed a new pooling bill.

“With the passage of this bill, it would create a lot of land owner protections that currently aren’t available,” explained Seth Gaskins, counsel to the committees on Energy, “and the new title for the bill is the Horizontal Well Unitization of Landowner Protection Act. We wanted to make sure that this bill is known as a protection bill as well as a pooling bill.”

One aspect of this new bill would clarify the royalty rights of mineral owners. It would protect owners from deductions if they are included in a pool without their consent.

But there’s more – Ireland is also proposing what he calls a companion bill to compliment the Horizontal Well Unitization of Landowner Protection Act.

“This bill attempts to create some transparency,” Gaskins said, “in the royalty payment process as well as institute or establish rather, reporting more frequent report of production…reporting of production data to the office of oil and gas.”

While there was little debate during the meeting, a couple lawmakers did express some concern over the two new draft bills, but Ireland says the legislature has to make pooling a priority.

“I think what we have currently is an opportunity to really improve on personal property rights,” Ireland said, “If you look at the statutes that includes forced pooling from the deep strata, and you look at what’s going on in the industry with a movement towards the Utica shale, which is a deep strata, so if we don’t do something, we basically have forced pooling already.”

The second controversial piece of legislation taken up during November interims Monday – public charter schools.

The 2015 bill on charter schools also died on the final night but not quite as loudly as forced pooling.

Public Charter Schools receive state and county funds just like regular public schools, but charter schools are not held to the same regulations as regular public schools. This in turn would give teachers at charter schools more flexibility in the way they deliver their curriculum, but they would still be subject to state education standards.

Lawmakers in the Joint Standing Committee on Education revisited the idea Monday and were presented statistics that showed increased test scores and creativity. Other studies, however, show charter schools do not increase student achievement and actually hurt low income and minority students. But Monday, lawmakers were presented with a new concern; lower rates of pay for educators.

“I’d say our teacher with twenty-eight years experience all-together is probably gonna make $38,000 and the teacher at the traditional public school is probably gonna make $58,000,” Susie Pierce said, the principal of the Rural Community Academy; a charter school in Graysville, Indiana.

Some lawmakers expressed concerns over how to attract and keep teachers in charter schools if they’re going to be paid less than traditional public school teachers.

Delegate Amanda Pasdon, a Co-Chair on the Joint Education Committee, says she’s looking forward to continuing the discussion in 2016.

“I’m glad that they were honest about their challenges,” Pasdon noted, “because what we’d like to do in West Virginia is take note of the challenges that other states have faced. We’re not reinventing the wheel, so we can learn from their successes and then also be aware of their challenges, so we know how to navigate them a little better.”

Charter School Bill Makes Its Way to the House

The Charter Schools bill made its way into the House Wednesday. The House Education Committee debated the bill until almost midnight that night. It ultimately passed and will soon be on first reading in the full House.

Senate Bill 14 was the focus of a lot of debate in the Senate, and passed Monday on a vote of 18 to 16. Public Charter Schools still receive government and county funds, just like regular public schools, but charter schools would not be overseen by the county Board of Education. This in turn would give teachers at charter schools more flexibility in the way they deliver their curriculum, but they would still be subject to state education standards.

Delegate Amanda Pasdon of Monongalia County, the House Education Chair, says charter schools will provide more options.

“I don’t have any concerns with the progression of it,” Pasdon said, “I think that there are those that support charter schools; public charter schools, I think there’s a lot of support, because it gives our students a choice, and I think that’s what this is really about is focusing on our students, making sure that we’re meeting their needs to the best of our ability, and this is really just a county option and a community option to allow communities to develop school choice and options that really benefit our students.”

In the House Education Committee meeting Wednesday night, there were a handful of amendments proposed by members. One of those amendments came from Delegate David Perry of Fayette County, the Minority Education Chair. It provided more auditing and oversight of charter schools.

“I proposed an amendment that the offices of education performance audits would monitor the charter schools,” Perry explained, “and this means that they would check on school climate, that they would monitor finances, that they would monitor instruction to ensure there was some accountability.”

Perry’s amendment was rejected, and he says he’s concerned that will make it difficult to make sure charter schools are providing quality educations for West Virginia students and spending their funds properly.

“Well I have concerns, number one, that there was not a fiscal note with the bill that we discovered, hadn’t been prepared after changes in the Senate, and I still have very much concern over accountability and when we’re dealing with public funds and the education that those children would receive or not receive,” Perry said.

Delegate Sean Hornbuckle of Cabell County also proposed two amendments to the bill. One would require three parents on the charter school governing board be proportionate to the demographic of the students attending the school. This amendment, however, was rejected, as well as a second amendment that dealt with a new idea not raised in the Senate.

“The other amendment that I proposed is we’re going to have two charter schools in the first five years of this program allowed to open up. The amendment simply stated that at least one of those schools need to be aimed at student populations of at risk pupils,” Hornbuckle said, “So this could be in super rural areas of the state, it could be in inner, inner cities of the state, but I feel again that if we’re gonna do this thing, and I think it has great, great potential, we need to make sure that we’re uplifting the students who truly, truly need it.”

Hornbuckle says by not adopting his amendment, it will set the state back.

“The concerns that I have is that we will go backwards. It will be, has potential, has potential to sort of segregate people as far as lower socioeconomic kids and higher socioeconomic kids, and I just don’t think we can afford that in our state. With the potential of charter schools being very, very good, we need to make sure that we craft it as best as we can to fit our demographics here in West Virginia,” Hornbuckle noted.

Delegate Pasdon says there were other amendments offered in the committee that, like Perry’s and Hornbuckle’s, she doesn’t believe are necessary.

“Well there were various amendments, you know, and for different reasons,” Pasdon said, “What we wanted to do is preserve the integrity of the bill. We wanted to be sure that we were making children and students the focus of this legislation, and we’ve steered away from anything that did the opposite.”

Senate Bill 14 will be on first reading in the House this weekend.

Common Core, Home Schooling, & Tensions Over Coal Jobs and Safety Act of 2015 in House

In the House Wednesday, the Education committee considered a bill that would repeal the common core standards in West Virginia schools. It passed with little debate, but received four amendments to adjust some technicalities and add new provisions to teacher organizations. It now heads to the floor for its consideration. But it was a bill relating to home schooling that brought some discussion among the delegates.

House Bill 2793 contains many provisions relating to home schooling. Among them, it removes the requirement that the person providing the home schooling instruction have a high school diploma; and it permits a parent to administer the required nationally normed standardized test.

Delegate Denise Campbell of Randolph County expressed some concern with the removal of this provision, and questioned who would monitor the tests if parents were allowed to administer them.

Mike Donnelly is an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association as well as a father of children who are home schooled. He addressed Campbell’s concern.

“The purpose of education is to help a child to attain the level of achievement that they’re capable of attaining, and a standardized test doesn’t really do that,” Donnelly noted, “So wherever you’ve got home school parents who have the ability to choose other approaches to assess their child, they’re gonna tend not to use that standardized test, because they want feedback that’s gonna be illustrative and instructed to them, so they’re going to ask a certified teacher, can you help me out here, what are you seeing here?”

During the floor session, another bill relating to home schooling was up for passage.

Delegate Amanda Pasdon, the House Education Chair, spoke on behalf of House Bill 2674.

“This bill allows home school students qualify for the PROMISE scholarship without taking the GED,” Pasdon explained, “It essentially levels the playing field. Home school students will be subject to the same standards as students who attend public or private high schools. I urge passage.”

House Bill 2674 passed 97 to 1. The one nay vote came from Delegate Dana Lynch, a Democrat from Webster County.

Another seven bills were up for passage, but all of them passed without any debate.

In the house, the part of the floor session that allows remarks by members have turned tense on many days and Wednesday was one of them.

Senate Bill 357, the Coal Jobs and Safety Act of 2015 was on first reading, not at the debate stage. But fresh from his angry speech in the Government Organization Committee about prevailing wage, Delegate Mike Caputo of Marion County addressed a set of articles he’d sent to all the delegates. The articles referenced multiple mine disasters that happened in recent years, and Caputo called the bill anything but about mine safety.

“There’s only a few of us in here ever been in a coal mine, and some of us have different views on this, and I respect that, but I’m telling you when you’re moving a major piece of equipment in a mine under extreme conditions anything can happen whether you have a trolley wire or whether you don’t. And when coal miners are in by that move, if that move catches on fire, you can have all the transportation equipment you want, you can have all the communication equipment you want, you can have all the rescue equipment you want, that smoke’s gonna get‘em. And you’re gonna be casting a vote tomorrow, an amendment, that I’m going to introduce to put this law back the way it was and the way it should be. So please, read this. Read this. Every coal company that testified to change that law, not once talked about health and safety, they talked about increasing profits, and I will close by saying, the most important thing, the most important thing to ever come out of a coal mine, is the coal miner.” – Delegate Mike Caputo

Delegate Randy Smith of Preston County was outraged by Caputo’s statements.

“I don’t sit behind a desk everyday making decisions. The men I work with don’t pay me to go and sit behind desks. I go underground every day. I’m in these conditions. I know what I’m talking about, and I’m here to tell you that I take offense to being my character attacked on social media, in the newspaper, from colleagues in this chamber. The bottom line is, when it’s said and done, I’m going to go back underground with those men, and anybody that thinks that I would pass a bill to put someone’s life in danger, and put my life in danger, all I can say is it saddens my heart to think that they would think I would be that low. This bill here, this situation that was just, he was just talking about, this situation this bill addresses, if it’s energized trolley wire, you come out by, it’s as simple as that. That doesn’t change, that’s what this law here was made, that’s what brought this law on was energized trolley wire that caused the fire, and it keeps that in place, but why should we stay in 1972? I would say within the next five years, there will be no, no trolley wire in the coal mines anywhere.” – Delegate Randy Smith

Senate Bill 357 will be on second reading, the amendment stage, Thursday.

Bullying in Schools to Be a Topic of Discussion in 2015 Legislative Session

Bullying and harassment in schools was the topic of discussion during the Joint Standing Committee on Education yesterday.

In the House Chamber, legislators met to discuss bullying in schools. Andy Whisman, the assistant director of research from the West Virginia Department of Education, discussed a study involving the definition of bullying versus the definition of harassment within West Virginia schools.

Whisman says many schools use the terms interchangeably or in some cases, one over the other, which can make dealing with the problem more difficult.

The study found less than 2 percent total discipline referrals last year were for harassment or bullying, and 50% of those referrals were from middle schools. Many of the students who were written up for bullying may have also been written up for things like truancy or disruptiveness.

Incoming House Education Chair, Delegate Amanda Pasdon says the definition of bullying will be discussed further in the coming Legislative session.

“I think our principals are trying to be as on the job as they possibly can,” said Pasdon, “I think we’ll look at maybe bringing those definitions a little closer and kind of understanding, you know, but we allowing…our principals the most latitude to address the problems, the latitude that they need in to address the problems within their schools.”

Last year, over 5000 hours were spent dealing with county schools and parents to resolve bullying issues, Whisman says.

Yes or No to Common Core? W.Va. Isn't Sure.

Common Core is an educational initiative that has been in news headlines lately due to some controversy surrounding it. At the State Capitol yesterday, Delegates, Senators, and public met on the House floor to hear from eight representatives either for or against Common Core.

Some citizens against Common Core sat in on the meeting, sporting bright, yellow t-shirts that said in bold black letters, “save our students” on one side and “stop common core” on the other. Caution tape lined the aisles of the chamber as if a crime scene had taken place.

Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas, was one of six speakers from out of state to address the issue. She claims those who wrote up the standards were not qualified.

“When we get to actually who wrote the standards, which is where I came into action on the validation committee, it then turns out that most of the key writers for both the ELA and the math standards had no K-12 teaching experience at all,” said Stotsky, “the ELA, English Language Arts writers had no degree in English or English literature, they had no prior involvement with K-12 education, indeed they were totally unknown to everyone in the field. Who chose them, why they were chosen, to this day, we still don’t know, because everything was done non-transparently.”

One of the speakers supporting common core was Dave Spence, the President of the Southern Regional Education Board. He argues that the level of success since Common Core was adopted, has significantly impacted education levels.

“So having one set of standards is critically important along with insuring they are rigorous enough to predict readiness for post-secondary education,” said Spence, “At SREB, since 2007, we have argued that all states should have standard meeting these criteria relating to college and career readiness. We also believe that there’s not only one set of standards in literacy and math that would meet these readiness requirements. We do believe that the common core state standards rise to the level of college and career readiness. That is why and how they were developed and researched. What I hope we don’t lose sight of as states, is that where states were seven to eight years ago, before the common core, somewhere near 40 states, either in English Literacy, Math, or both, did not come up to the level of college and career readiness.”

Delegate Amanda Pasdon, the incoming chair on Education, says there’s a lot that needs to be discussed once the Legislature is in session.

“We need to have standards for our children,” Pasdon said, “certainly everybody needs accountability and we need standards set in education. What we’re learning about Common Core is that we had some challenges with the rollout, there was some challenges with implementation, and there’s been some backlash for that, and that’s understandable, so what we want to make sure more than anything that we do is get it right for our students and get it right for our children.”

So Pasdon agrees we need standards in West Virginia, either Common Core or not Common Core.