Days before the state took over Hancock County Schools, consultants told lawmakers the state’s public school funding formula and Hope Scholarship were failing to serve students who most need help.
by Henry Culvyhouse for Mountain State Spotlight
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Just days before the West Virginia Department of Education took over another school district, lawmakers were told they should cap private education scholarships based on need and better fund public schools.
Clicking through a PowerPoint presentation, RAND Corporation policy analysts Benjamin Master and Brian Phillips told lawmakers who had piled into their seats in the House of Delegates that the state’s funding formula for public schools is convoluted and fails to address students who need it the most.
Their report was commissioned by the West Virginia House of Delegates for $114,000.
Master and Phillips said the Hope Scholarship, which gives thousands of dollars to families who choose to put their children into private education, should be capped based on income in order to keep costs down.
Later that evening, Gov. Patrick Morrisey told lawmakers in his State of the State address that his new budget would fully fund the Hope Scholarship, which now accounts for more than $230 million, making up 75% of the Department of Education’s operating budget.
Just two days later, the state took over Hancock County Public Schools, after the state Department of Education discovered the district would not be able to make payroll.
State officials have said in testimony before the House Finance Committee that a combination of bad bookkeeping, leasing an astroturf field and relying on COVID-19 funding to keep people in jobs caused the problem.
But Tamaya Browder, an education fellow with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, noted these budget pressures don’t happen in a vacuum. She said school districts had to rely on COVID funds to keep staff because the school aid formula isn’t giving enough to schools and the Hope Scholarship is diverting money away.
“When that (COVID) funding was lost, our recommendations at that time was actually to replace that with the state funding that we would be committing to the Hope Scholarship,” Browder said.
Senate Education chair Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, said she too shares concerns about the potential for Hope to cannibalize investments made into the public school system, especially with eligibility opening up to any family next school year.
“I’m 100% in favor of a parent’s choice,” she said. “But I am concerned about opening it up completely, and what kind of drain that’ll be on us.”
House Education chair Del. Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, said the concern about funds being diverted from public education through the Hope Scholarship could be applied to anything in the budget.
“I know it’s a big concern across the state and especially into the public education arena, but at the same time, money when it’s spent once — no matter where — it’s spent,” Statler said. “I could point out a thousand other areas that people may object to and say it’d be better placed in education.”
The RAND study also suggested more funding go to districts with higher populations of students living in poverty, students in special education and students who are learning English as a second language.
State Superintendent Michele Blatt told the House Finance committee that counties are only receiving about half the funds they need to teach special education students.
“A lot of that comes to personnel, because so many of our high-need, special education students need nurses. They need one-on-one aid, and these different resources,” she said. “And so all of those things impact and pull from the other services our counties are able to provide.”
The RAND report lays out multiple funding scenarios for reworking the school aid formula to shift more money towards special education, as well as the low-income and English as second language students. Those proposals range from $37 million to $80 million additional dollars.
Blatt urged adoption of the RAND recommendation for additional funding to go to school districts based on the population of special education students.
Grady also believes the answer is more funding for public schools.
“We have special education students that cost 10 times as much to educate as a ‘traditional student,’” she said. “You have counties that have more of a population of those kids. They need to be paid adequately for the cost of education.”
Statler said getting more funding for special education is necessary, but difficult while the budget is underway.
“This is not going to be cheap. It’s going to be a significant adjustment to those budgets,” he said.
On Jan. 19, lawmakers were confronted with the Hancock County situation in the House Finance Committee when they rushed through a bill to set up a loan program for it and any other county that gets in financial trouble in the future.
The bill was fast tracked through the House of Delegates and passed the same day 91-2.
West Virginia Board of Education President Paul Hardesty warned that this takeover could be a harbinger of things to come, as more counties run out of federal dollars from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I knew this COVID cliff was coming,” he said. “There will be others within two, three years, heading your way.”
