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Education savings accounts expanded with amendment

CHARLESTON — An amendment offered on the floor of the House of Delegates on Wednesday by a freshman lawmaker could expand the scope and price tag of a proposed education savings account program up for passage today.

The House approved two amendments to HB 2013, which creates the Hope Scholarship — West Virginia’s first education savings account (ESA) program.

The Hope Scholarship would give parents the option to use their tax dollars for educational expenses, such as private school tuition, home tutoring, learning aids and other acceptable expenses. If passed, West Virginia would become the seventh state with an ESA program.

A successful amendment from House Education Committee Chairman Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, made technical cleanup changes to the language of the bill. But an amendment by Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, would expand the bill.

In the original bill, the amount of money available from the scholarship to eligible applicants would be no less than 2 percent of the net public school enrollment or the total number of eligible Hope Scholarship applicants received by the State Treasurer’s Office, whichever is greater. Potentially the program could receive $23 million in state funding if approximately 5,000 students participate.

Burkhammer’s amendment, which was approved by voice vote, would open up the program to all eligible students – including home school students and private school students — by 2026, or a maximum of 22,000 students at a cost of $101 million annually starting in fiscal year 2027.

“This is just simply adding a date of July 1, 2026, that all kids that are eligible in this state — school aged kids — would now be eligible for the Hope Scholarship,” Burkhammer said. “We should not be putting dollar figures on kids. These are West Virginia kids, West Virginia families, West Virginia parents, and we’re just looking out for them.”

Democratic lawmakers accused the Republican majority of hypocrisy, supporting an amendment that increases spending versus cutting spending.

“Looking at just the cost of figures alone, this is going to blow a massive hole in county school system budgets considering the addition of homeschool and private students,” said Del. Cody Thompson, D-Randolph. “I just have a major concern about what that could do to our funding for our public schools.”

“It’s just huge,” said Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha. “It may feel somewhat equitable, but the price tag just went right through the roof. It is an unbelievable amount of money to be voting here in a simple amendment on the floor for the first time to completely change the nature of this program.”

Amendments offered by House Democrats failed on largely party-line votes, including amendments to limit eligibility for the scholarship to single-income households making $50,000 per year and dual-income households making $100,000 per year, capping participation at 2,500 students, and adding language prohibiting discrimination of students on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, religion, and disability.

“I think we need to have these five specific items included in this bill, so the Hope Scholarship program is prevented by the State of West Virginia from discriminating in these five categories,” said Del. John Doyle, D-Jefferson. “Without that, I think we’re going to end up with a lot of discrimination and therefore be a lot of lawsuits.”

House Education Committee Chairman Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, said federal law as it relates to education already addresses many of the discrimination concerns raised by Doyle. As for gender identity and sexual orientation, that would be better handled by amending the state Human Rights Act – something Democratic and some Republican lawmakers have tried to do with the Fairness Act with no success.

“There is no federal law applying to public or private school students that make sexual orientation (and gender identification) a protected class for the purposes of discrimination,” Ellington said. “This would create additional rights for Hope Scholarship recipients that wouldn’t be available to other public or private school students. The appropriate mechanism, in my opinion, would be to place this type of amendment in the West Virginia Human Rights Act and not in this bill.”

Qualifying expenses under the Hope Scholarship include tuition and fees at participating private schools, tutoring, standardized testing and advanced placement exam fees, and ongoing services provided by a public school. The bill creates the Board of Hope Scholarship, which can remove recipients for failure to comply with agreement terms.

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