Hundreds of educational leaders from across the country were in the nation’s capital Wednesday to advocate for more support to address the mental health and educator shortage crises.
Hundreds of educational leaders from across the country were in the nation’s capital Wednesday to advocate for more support to address the mental health and educator shortage crises. Principals and administrators urged Congress to prioritize educational spending in current budget negotiations as part of the National Conference on School Leadership.
John Conrad, principal of Westwood Middle School in Morgantown, and Wheeling Park High School Principal Meredith Dailer spent the morning meeting with the staff of West Virginia’s Congressional delegation.
Conrad said schools in West Virginia rely on a myriad of federal funds to function.
“People are very familiar with Title I, but also Title II and Title IV and IDEA state grants,” he said. “We’re just hoping that they at least keep the level of funding.”
Conrad said staffers don’t hear from educators and principals enough, and being able to make personal contact goes a long way. He was able to meet with Sen. Joe Manchin directly and urged him to support specific legislation to address mental health and staffing issues in schools.
“We talked a lot about educator shortages and the principal pipeline, and what we can do to get people into the profession, become an educator, and then stay in the profession,” he said. “We talked about the Loan Forgiveness for Educators Act, and how we can utilize that to attract people and to stay in the field of education.”
Gov. Jim Justice said he is open to a special legislative session later this year to address the state budget.
Gov. Jim Justice said he is open to a special legislative session later this year to address the state budget.
Last week, legislators were notified of a potential $465 million federal “clawback” of COVID-19 era funding regarding the state’s spending on education. Legislators like the House Finance Committee chairman, Vernon Criss, R-Wood, said the late notice has required adjustments and delays to the state’s proposed budget.
At his regular briefing Wednesday, Justice was open to the idea of a May session to address further funding but was confident that lawmakers could pass a base budget before the close of session Saturday.
“I think I know where we’re gonna stand,” he said. “We want to encourage the Senate in regard to our pay raises and our tax cuts that we have in, helping the hungry and those things that are already kind of built into my budget and everything. But as far as our one-time spending and so on like that if we want to, if we want to come back in May and try to hash that out you know I guess it’d be fine.”
Justice said Superintendent Michele Blatt has been working on the clawback issue, as has his chief of staff, and he does not believe a clawback will happen.
“We have absolutely had discussion after discussion after discussion,” he said. “We are absolute believers that absolutely the education fed folks are not going to claw back on us at all in regard to this. But let’s just see how it all plays out and everything.”
Fish Stocking
Justice also announced an agreement had been reached with the federal government to allow the state’s trout stocking program to continue. The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service had removed certain waters from the trout stocking schedule due to concerns about endangered species.
As part of the agreement, West Virginia University will study trout feeding habits in an effort to protect the endangered candy darter, Guyandotte River crayfish and Big Sandy crayfish.
“At the end of the day, we don’t want to endanger any endangered species,” Justice said. “We don’t want to do anything that’s going to harm our environment in any way. We just want to do the right stuff.”
The agreement between the state Department of Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife allows stocking to resume in four streams in four southern West Virginia counties. The stockings will now take place in May in Greenbrier, Nicholas, Wyoming and Mercer counties.
Update To Secretary Wriston’s Traffic Stop
For the third week in a row, Justice also addressed the traffic stop of West Virginia Department of Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston by Charleston Police in February.
“I just don’t get all this stuff but we have every reason to believe now that Jimmy Wriston was just set up,” Justice said. “That’s all there is to it. And from our standpoint, we’re waiting. We’re waiting on the Charleston Police Department and Kanawha County prosecutor to bring us a lot more information in regard to that.”
Wriston was not charged or cited at the time of the stop. A release from the Charleston Police the following day stated an investigation was underway, and a later update said “the person who contacted Metro Communications to report erratic driving by the vehicle involved in this incident was not a WV State Trooper.”
A later update stated that, “CPD officers were not able to find probable cause to arrest Mr. Wriston based on the fact that Mr. Wriston passed two field sobriety tests that were conducted.”
The update does note that an “odor of alcohol” was indicated by a preliminary breath test, “however, CPD Officers on the scene believed that the test was inconclusive and inconsistent with other tests being performed that Mr. Wriston passed.”
The Charleston Police Department has opened a criminal investigation into the person who called 911 to report the erratic driving “to determine if the information they provided CPD Officers was accurate and truthful.”
The first round of Hope Scholarship money was awarded to families on Friday, following months of legal battles.
The first round of Hope Scholarship money was awarded to families on Friday, following months of legal battles.
Nearly 1,800 students and their families received vouchers to cover educational expenses for non-public schools. Of that number, 1,610 were granted the full annual amount of nearly $4,298.60.
Other applicants are still waiting for their payments, including 466 that are waiting for inconsistencies in the West Virginia Education Informational System of when students transferred schools to be dealt with.
A remaining 619 have not had payments issued – a statement from the state treasurer’s office says these families haven’t responded to a questionnaire from Hope Scholarship Board staff asking about their child’s status. They believe most of these cases come from families that decided to keep their children in public schools during the injunction.
“I know the injunction and the uncertainty it caused created a tremendous hardship on families, and we appreciate the patience they have displayed as we continue to work through the litany of issues it produced,” state treasurer Riley Moore said in the release. Moore is also the chairman of the Hope Scholarship Board.
In total, nearly 3,000 families applied for Hope Scholarship funds before an injunction in Kanawha Circuit Court halted the program last May. It was lifted in October by the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals.
Advocates of the Hope Scholarship program call it a victory for school choice, while opponents say it’s taking away needed money from the state’s public school systems.
The period to apply for next school year’s round of Hope Scholarship funding begins March 1, with current applicants eligible to reapply on Feb. 15.
A Senate committee has delayed consideration of a bill that some Democratic members challenged as being unconstitutional Saturday.
Senate Bill 609 would cut funding to public education by reducing the state school aid funding formula.
As introduced, the bill would have reduced public education funding by cutting the money available to be distributed by the school aid funding formula by 5 percent, or $55 million.
In the Senate’s Education Committee, however, the bill was rewritten, making a larger cut and shifting the tax burden away from general revenues to increased local property taxes.
School Levies:
The multi-step process in the school aid funding formula that is followed to compute the state dollars each county receives includes a calculation based on the local funding brought in through a county excise school levy.
Those levies must be approved by the voters in the county because they result in increased property taxes in order to generate additional money for their schools. Levy rates themselves, or the actual percentage increase of taxes allowed to be proposed in a levy, are set by the Legislature.
Currently under state code, counties can assess levies at 19.4 cents for every $100 of value a property is appraised. The maximum the Legislature can set that rate at is just over 22 cents per $100 of value.
The Senate Education Committee’s version of Senate Bill 609, which was approved Thursday evening, would pass the authority to increase the levy rate from the Legislature to individual county boards of education.
That shift in power is paired with more flexibility for county administrators to spend their state dollars how they see fit, but also a $79 million reduction in that funding, shared among the counties at different rates.
Senate Education Committee Attorney Hank Hager explained to the Finance Committee Saturday that while the new committee version of the bill does result in a funding cut, county boards of education can vote to increase their levy rates and make the county whole.
Credit Will Price / West Virginia Legislative Photography
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
Sen. Bob Plymale gives a speech on the Senate floor.
Democratic Sen. Bob Plymale questioned Hager in committee about the county control in the bill. Should a county vote against increasing their levying rate, their state dollars will still be reduced. That would result in counties receiving different levels of funding from the state, he said.
Senate Minority Leader Roman Prezioso argued that variance in funding could result in a violation of the Recht decision and be deemed unconstitutional.
The Recht Decision:
The Recht decision is named after then-Ohio County Judge Arthur Recht, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s was charged with hearing evidence in a case remanded to the circuit court by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
In the case, a Jackson County mother argued that because she lived in a poor county, her children were not receiving the same quality of education as children in rich counties, violating the state Constitution’s requirement that lawmakers provide all West Virginians with a “thorough and efficient” education.
The state Supreme Court agreed and Judge Recht was charged with exploring what that system should look like, releasing his decision — or set of standards for providing that education — in 1984. Those standards, among many things, required the state to fund each county school system equally.
Reconsidering the Bill:
After the committee’s open discussion, and a brief caucus of Republican Finance Committee members, Senate Finance Chair Mike Hall decided to pull the bill from the agenda Saturday and push consideration to a Monday afternoon meeting.
“The schools have to be equally funded, and the school aid formula creates a statute that distributes money equally based on student population across the state,” Hall said, but the version of the bill passed in through the Senate Education Committee, he added, could create the situation of unequal funding.
Hall said only one-sixth of the funding for public schools comes from local property taxes and the bill is essentially asking West Virginians to take on a larger local share, increasing the property tax levying rate to the highest amount possible without a Constitutional amendment.
The committee will be presented with a new version of Senate Bill 609 Monday; one that Hall said will likely call on the Legislature to increase the levying rate from 19.4 cent to the full 22.9 cents, rather than giving local county boards of education the authority to increase the rates.
That change, he said, will still result in a $79 million reduction in general revenue funds going to county school systems, but a statewide increase in property taxes to make up for the cut, not a variance of funding in the counties.
The Senate Finance Committee has put the bill on its agenda for 3 p.m. Monday.
Wednesday is the final day for Senators to approve any bills that originated in their chamber.
