Homeschooling Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Homeschooling, School Sports Discussed In Education Committees

Education committees in the West Virginia Legislature started the week off by considering changes to homeschooling requirements, as well as sports outside the school.

Monday afternoon the House Education Committee considered bills to promote registered apprenticeship programs, revise requirements of local school improvement councils and remove some requirements for homeschooling.

The original House Bill 5180 would have done away with the requirement that homeschool parents have a high school diploma or higher to provide home instruction. But that requirement was added back in with a committee substitute.

The bill changes how required academic assessments of the homeschooled child at grade level 3, 5, 8 and 11 are presented to the county superintendent, and allows microschools to submit a composite of assessment results instead of individual scores.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, proposed an amendment that would bar county boards of education from authorizing instruction in the home if there is a pending child abuse or neglect investigation or a domestic violence conviction against either custodial parent or an instructor.

Pushkin said he recognizes most homeschoolers are deeply involved and care for their children but was inspired by another law that has often been proposed but never made it far in the legislative process.

“Oftentimes, it’s an instructor or a gym teacher, somebody a service personnel, somebody in the school, spots the signs of abuse, and that’s how they find out and that’s what could lead to that phone call being made that might save a child’s life,” he said. “I’ve offered this amendment, because unfortunately, that bill has been introduced year after a year, Raylee’s Law has been introduced year after year.”

Raylee’s Law is named after an eight-year-old girl who died of abuse and neglect in 2018 after her parents withdrew her from school.

The amendment was voted down nine to 15, and the committee substitute was recommended to the full House for consideration.

The House Education Committee also discussed:

HB 5162, Establish a program to promote creation and expansion of registered apprenticeship programs.
SB 172, Revising requirements of local school improvement councils.

Senate

In the Senate Education Committee Tuesday morning, Senators approved bill SB 750 aimed at promoting fentanyl awareness and education, without discussion. A similar bill sparked much debate in the House Education Committee last week.

Senators instead debated the merits of SB 813, which would allow students to participate in non-school competitive activities, and remove restrictions on external teams as a condition for playing for a school, team or sport.

Committee Vice Chair Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, expressed concern that the rule change would allow teams to keep playing beyond their intended season and erode the state’s athletic schedule.

“Right now you can’t start football practice until a certain date, you can’t start basketball practice until a certain date,” Clements said. “So what are we going to do with this and we keep talking about baseball. Okay, we take baseball. Baseball season usually ends for high school at the state baseball tournament. So if this is allowed to continue with the same coach and the same kids will just continue this whole season through until football season starts.”

Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, proposed an amendment that would extend the bill’s provisions to coaches, freeing them up to coach multiple teams.

Sen. David Stover, R-Wyoming, expressed his support for the amendment but also stated his concern that non-school teams would compete concurrently with school teams resulting in divided attention and loyalty from student athletes.

“If you’re playing a high school sport, that’s where your loyalty lies,” Stover said. “I agree with all this. Coaches should, they all better coach the travel teams. I don’t care if you play baseball around the clock but during the season for high school, that’s the season for high school ball.”

The amendment, as well as the broader bill, were ultimately adopted and recommended to the full Senate.

The Senate Education Committee also discussed:

SB806 – Removing certain required reports to Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability
SB761 – Providing greater access to unused buildings for public charter schools

A Discussion On Homeschooling, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, Randy Yohe sat down with public school teacher Del. Jeff Stephens, R-Marshall, and Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, Chair of the Senate School Choice Committee, for a discussion on homeschooling.

On this West Virginia Morning, about 20,000 West Virginia children are homeschooled, with the numbers growing every day. Some in state education and the West Virginia Legislature help champion school choice, while others worry about the quality of the education and the safety of homeschooled children.

For The Legislature Today, Randy Yohe sat down with public school teacher Del. Jeff Stephens, R-Marshall, and Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, Chair of the Senate School Choice Committee, for a discussion.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Eric Douglas is our news director and producer.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Lawmakers Talk Homeschooling In W.Va.

On this episode of The Legislature Today, about 20,000 West Virginia children are homeschooled, with that numbers growing every day. Some officials in state education and the West Virginia Legislature help champion school choice. Others worry about the quality of the education and the safety of homeschooled children.

On this episode of The Legislature Today, about 20,000 West Virginia children are homeschooled, with that numbers growing every day. Some officials in state education and the West Virginia Legislature help champion school choice. Others worry about the quality of the education and the safety of homeschooled children.

Randy Yohe sat down with public school teacher Del. Jeff Stevens, R-Marshall, and Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, chair of the Senate School Choice Committee, to discuss all things homeschooling.

In the House, spirited debate echoed through the chamber. Bills on third reading included a bill on what air monitoring systems can be used in court, and another bill toughening laws on copper theft. Randy Yohe has more.

In the Senate, the chamber passed four bills and sent them to the House for consideration.

Also, student discipline continues to be an issue in West Virginia schools, and lawmakers continue to try and address the issue through legislation. A bill in the Senate is trying to expand on a law that was passed last year. Chris Schulz has more.

Finally, it was Food and Farm Day at the Capitol, and the emphasis was on West Virginia farmers getting legislative help to better market their produce and products. Randy Yohe has more.

Having trouble viewing the video below? Click here to watch it on YouTube.

The Legislature Today is West Virginia’s only television/radio simulcast devoted to covering the state’s 60-day regular legislative session.

Watch or listen to new episodes Monday through Friday at 6 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Hope Scholarship Applicants Top 6,000 In Second Enrollment Session

More than 6,000 West Virginia students’ families have signed up for the Hope Scholarship savings account that allows them to take state money and apply it to tuition for private schools.

More than 6,000 West Virginia students’ families have signed up for the Hope Scholarship savings account that allows them to take state money and apply it to tuition for private and homeschool.

State Treasurer Riley Moore, whose office administers the school choice program, spoke to Randy Yohe about the process of getting and using a Hope Scholarship and the growing numbers who want to opt out of the public school system.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Yohe: You’ve got your final application numbers in. This is really the first, full Hope Scholarship enrollment session that ended on May 15 with more than 6,000 applications. Was that number expected?

Moore: It kind of tracked where we thought it could be. We came in at 6,323 students. Most of that growth came from kindergartners, and that’s where we saw most of the growth from the numbers in the prior year. To be clear, these applications that we received include students that are currently Hope Scholarship students because they must reapply every year. The application deadline ended on May 15. That does not mean that you need to be approved by May 15. You just had to submit your application by May 15. My office has 45 days to approve that application. It generally never takes that long.

Yohe: Do you expect that number to continue to increase?

Moore: I think it will increase on the kindergarten side. I estimate it is probably between 1,500 and 2,000 students a year. We’ll have, in addition to that, maybe some others wanting to leave public school. We’re not seeing huge numbers of folks leaving public school since the initial tranche of that was in the year prior. Where you’re going to see a large number of people come into this program is 2026. That, by law, is when the program opens up to everybody. That means current private school children and current homeschooled children could then apply for Hope Scholarship in 2026. Currently, you have to either be a rising kindergartener, or in public school for 45 days to apply.

Yohe: If my figures are right, the more than 5,000 students that you believe will be eligible will cost the program more than $22 million. What is the Hope Scholarships budget?

Moore: It’s roughly around there. Because we have an estimate. The long term budget number on this, once it opens up in 2026, is probably $150 million a year.

Yohe: What’s the main reason that you see families applying for scholarships?

Moore: I think people want to exercise some educational options and choices. This is about educational freedom. It’s about individuals being able to utilize their tax dollars in the manner that they see fit to educate their children. Some people certainly want to remain and continue in their public school system and they like the school that they’re in. Some would like to send their kids to, say a christian school, a catholic school or what have you, some type of parochial education, and I think that’s great.

Yohe: I’ve noticed a number of church marquees that say apply for the Hope Scholarship, both in Huntington where I live and around the state.

Moore: Catholic schools like the ones in Huntington or Charleston, in Morgantown, Martinsburg, Wheeling, they’re everywhere. Using those Catholic schools as an example, there is a capacity, right? I mean, they can’t take unlimited amounts of children. So, I think that’s going to be kind of a natural backstop in terms of an explosion in growth. I do think it will probably spur growth, perhaps in this Catholic school system over time. You’re talking about having to build new buildings and things of that nature. But then also you have the ability to homeschool your children with these dollars as well. And we have seen some individuals decide to exercise that, and I think that you’ll have some more homeschool families apply for this in the future as well, particularly after 2026.

Yohe: We’ve also seen a statewide advertising campaign. I’m seeing a lot of billboards, and heard some advertising on the radio. I’m not sure if it’s in television media or newspapers, but talk about the impetus for your Hope Scholarship advertising campaign.

Moore: That is actually outside organizations that have been advertising this program. We’ve not done a tremendous amount of advertising in this office, just because we’ve seen outside groups doing it. As good stewards of the taxpayer dollars, we didn’t feel like we needed to double down on money that’s already being spent.

Yohe: There was a mention at the state Board of Education meeting last week that there was possibly some Hope Scholarship money that was used out of state.

Moore: That is actually permissible. The way the legislation was enacted allows Hope Scholarship funds to be used out of state, there is a provision that allows for that. Let’s say, if you live in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, there’s not a lot of private school options there. There’s actually no Catholic High School in the entire Eastern Panhandle. So, West Virginia residents can send their children to out of state schools with Hope Scholarship money.

Yohe: The scholarship amount varies every year. For the 2023-24 school year, it will be $4,488.82. What do those funds basically go towards?

Moore: Generally, it’s going towards tuition, but it can also apply to school uniforms, books, tutors. We’ve talked about homeschool, so that entire curriculum, which would also involve materials and books and things of that nature. There are qualified expenses that are approved by the board around those that have scholarships. You can’t just spend it on whatever you want. These dollars go into a digital wallet, we don’t send out checks for people to just go ahead and buy whatever they think is permissible. There’s a safeguard measure in this, and this is audited internally as well.

Senate Education Discusses Financial Literacy, Free Period Products

The Senate Education Committee started the day off with a lively discussion of several topics, including history and hygiene.

Senate Bill 216 would require all schools to instruct students on the Holocaust and other genocides.

Although there was brief discussion around the need to define the term “genocide,” much of the debate and ensuing amendments to the bill related to concerns about government overreach into private education.

Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, argued the bill exacerbated an imbalance of creating requirements for secular schools, but not for homeschooling or other alternative education programs.

“What we’re adding on to I’m fine with, I have no problem,” Roberts said. “I’m thrilled, except for the forcing of the private schools to do these things when, by the way, we have twice as many homeschoolers in the state of West Virginia as we do private school students. We don’t do those things with all of the others. This is a singling out, is where I have the problem.”

Roberts proposed an amendment to strike the words, “private, parochial, and denominational” from the bill, which was adopted.

Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, proposed another amendment that would require all public schools to teach financial literacy.

“The basic understanding of a checking account and banking and how a mortgage works, how a car payment works; those kinds of things, I think are things that somehow some of our children are, as they leave public schools, are not prepared to have knowledge in those areas, and those are decisions they’re having to make that can really affect them,” Oliverio said.

State Superintendent David Roach testified that West Virginia schools do teach financial literacy and have for years but conceded that there is nothing in the state code requiring it be taught. The amendment also passed.

A committee substitute of Senate Bill 216 was reported to the full Senate with the recommendation that it pass.

Free Period Products

The committee also took up Senate Bill 489, which would require all county boards of education to provide free feminine hygiene products to students in grades three through 12.

In recent surveys from the Alliance for Period Supplies, a nonprofit sponsored by Kotex, more than two in five people with periods say they have struggled to purchase period products due to lack of income at some point in their life, often leading to missed work and school. The surveys also show COVID-19 has only exacerbated the issue of access.

Sen. David Stover, R-Wyoming, voiced his support for the bill. As a teacher for more than 20 years, Stover said he saw firsthand the need for period products in schools.

“What I ended up doing for the last 10 or 12 years I taught, any two or three of the female students that I knew, and knew their moms – who I probably taught 20 years earlier – I just donated for 500 bucks,” Stover said.

“I said, ‘Here’s the fund, you and your mothers figure out where this will be stored. You don’t need to do anything, we’ll kind of know when you get up and go to that particular file cabinet.’ It was a godsend that that could happen. It would be a bigger godsend because it ended up being that students from every teacher in the building would interrupt my class then. So you need to do that in a central way. This could have been done a long time ago.”

If passed, West Virginia would join 16 other states including neighboring Maryland and Virginia in requiring period products in schools.

Senate Bill 489 was also reported to the full Senate with the recommendation that it pass.

Results Of Focus Groups

At the end of the meeting, the Senators heard a joint presentation from the state’s two education employee organizations.

American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia President Fred Albert and West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee presented some of the findings from six focus groups the organizations conducted across the state in late November and early December 2022 to collect community input on the factors that will help improve student achievement.

They reported the major finding was schools simply need more resources, closely followed by concerns of discipline, teacher compensation and academic freedom.

W.Va. Supreme Court Issues Opinion In Scholarship Ruling

West Virginia’s Supreme Court released a full opinion Thursday in an order it issued last month that allowed a non-public school scholarship program to continue.

The five-member court on Oct. 6 reversed a lower court’s ruling that had blocked the Hope Scholarship Program. The program was supposed to start this school year and is one of the most far-reaching school choice programs in the country. It incentivizes West Virginia families to pull their children out of K-12 public schools by offering them state-funded scholarships.

A Charleston-area judge in July ruled the program violated the state’s constitutional mandate to provide “a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Tim Armstead said in a 49-page opinion that the state Constitution “does not prohibit the Legislature from enacting the Hope Scholarship Act in addition to providing for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

“The Constitution allows the Legislature to do both of these things,” Armstead said. “Therefore, we find that the circuit court abused its discretion by permanently enjoining the State from implementing the Hope Scholarship Act.”

The higher court’s decision was not unanimous. In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice John Hutchison argued that the state Constitution provides “that the Legislature’s obligation to provide a through and efficient education is limited to doing so only by a system of free schools, not through subsidizing private educational systems.

“As such, the Hope Scholarship Act and its subsidization of private education is prohibited by the West Virginia Constitution. I would, therefore, have affirmed the circuit court,” he wrote.

Passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year, the law that created the Hope Scholarship Program allows families to apply for state funding to support private school tuition, homeschooling fees and a wide range of other expenses.

More than 3,000 students were approved to receive around $4,300 each during the program’s inaugural cycle, according to the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office. The first payments were supposed to go out in August but were put on hold while the lower court’s block on the program was in place.

Families can’t receive the money if their children were already homeschooled or attending private school. To qualify, students have to have been enrolled in a West Virginia public school last year or had to be set to begin kindergarten this school year.

In January, three parents of special education students sued the state, saying the scholarship program takes money away from already underfunded public schools. The lawsuit was supported by the West Virginia Board of Education. One family later withdrew from the case.