CHARLESTON — As the first year for West Virginia’s public charter schools approaches, officials who manage the new program accused state agencies of creating bureaucratic red tape.

Members of the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board met virtually Tuesday morning. Chairman Adam Kissel informed board members of a number of issues facing the state’s first two brick-and-mortar charter schools and two statewide virtual charter schools.

Some of the issues include navigating state Board of Education Policy 3300, which set the rules for West Virginia public charter school pilot program created by House Bill 2006 in 2019 and later updated in 2020 with House Bill 2012; working with the Department of Health and Human Resources through the Division of Early Care and Education on pre-Kindergarten programs; issues obtaining state-managed email addresses; and access to tax forms.

One public charter school in particular has had problems getting its employees entered into the state Teachers’ Retirement System and the Public Employees insurance Agency. According to the agencies, the Morgantown-based West Virginia Academy reached out to PEIA in June and the Consolidated Public Retirement Board in July around the time.

In the case of PEIA, the open enrollment period for plan year 2023 ended May 15, though Kissel said PEIA is working to get West Virginia Academy employees into the system. In the case of the CPRB, Kissel said the agency developed an onerous form for employees to fill out.

“We understand under the law that public charter schools and public charter school teachers are to be treated the same way as non-charter schools,” Kissel said. “Unfortunately, we got a big form that was created just for charter schools out of CPRB. It’s unclear that that’s necessary, but it’s also a little bit burdensome.”

HB 206 does allow employees of public charter schools to participate in PEIA and the Teachers’ Retirement System, though the law doesn’t specifically direct PEIA or the CPRB to proactively create a mechanism for those employees to be included. The Professional Charter School Board first approved the West Virginia Academy and the other three public charter schools in November 2021.

“Both of those agencies, they had years to figure out what to do with charter schools,” Kissel said. “Instead, they waited for an inquiry from the first charter school not that many weeks ago and only then did it seem like they really got started on handling the charter school law. It’s due to their slowness that those teachers may not have their full benefits from the beginning.”

When reached out to last week, both CPRB and PEIA pushed back against accusations they were delaying entry of West Virginia Academy employees in separate statements.

The CPRB was first contacted by the West Virginia Academy at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, July 1, 2022, and is not delaying the West Virginia Academy’s request to participate in the Teacher’s Retirement System,” said CPRB Director Jeff Fleck. “We have been working with our legal counsel to perform due diligence to ensure that they meet all of the statutory requirements to participate in the plan and will be requesting additional information from them today.”

“PEIA has been working diligently to enable enrollment of eligible charter school employees per the new code section, since we received the first inquiry in June 2022,” said PEIA Interim Director Jason Haught. “Any perceived delay since this first request in June is solely attributable to ensuring that a new type of agency participation agreement is created to ensure compliance with applicable law, and in no way an intentional delay.”

Board member Dewayne Duncan recommended that the board begin looking into future legislation in order to remove any bureaucratic hurdles to ensure that state agencies are cooperating with charter schools. Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, also agreed. Ellington, as chairman of the House Education Committee, is a non-voting member of the board.

“I think some of this is growing pains, but I also could see that they’re not going to be very helpful,” Ellington said. “We’ve seen that with what’s going on here. We saw that with the Hope Scholarship stuff too. They don’t want it to happen. I think you’re just going to have to be diligent and try to get as many things as you can done ahead of time.”