Dilly provides legislative update
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ELKINS -- The Randolph County Superintendent of Schools provided an update Tuesday night on legislative bills that school officials hope will help provide funding to overcome a projected budget shortfall.
Dr. Shawn Dilly talked briefly during Tuesday's Board of Education about some legislative happenings at both the state and federal levels.
Dilly told BOE members Rachel Anger, Phil Chua, Janie Newlon, Sherri Collet and Ed Daniels that he received news Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Education.
"I saw where 3% of the Title 1 funds that would be coming down, could be potentially unchanneled to private and school choice options, which is troubling to say the least," he said. "We are hopeful that will come to pass, but until we get that final information, it's concerning, very concerning… There's a lot of ambiguity about what may be or may happen, but again this is some of the first written line of information we've received. That 3% is very concerning."
In recent months, State Senator Robbie Morris, R-District 11, and Delegate Jonathan Kyle, R-District 66, have been vocal about wanting to work hard to provide help for the financially troubled Randolph County school system while in Charleston.
While the bills Morris and Kyle have sponsored were not discussed Tuesday, Dilly did update the BOE on several other bills he has his eyes on.
"I've been trying to keep up on some of the ongoing aspects related to some of the proposals," he said. "I just wanted to share some highlights of some things, some possibly positive, but a lot of them concerning."
Dilly mentioned House Bill 2411, which aims to modify graduation requirements and academic content standards, specifically requiring a computer science credit for high school students and establishing related requirements.
"House Bill 2411, I'm not opposed to it, but again it's without funding," Dilly said. "It's not an issue so much that there would be challenges implementing it. But once again, is the state stepping in? Is the Legislature stepping in and telling us what we have to do? I would rather that be a local level decision that we make…
"Again, if they are going to require it, they should be funding these requirements for us… It sounds like there may be funding for some components of it, but I don't know if they would have funding for the employment of these folks."
Dilly said the point of Senate Bill 261 is to change the name of the School Building Authority to the School Maintenance Authority.
"I think this one appears innocent on the surface, but it has far bigger implications with its efforts to funnel money outside of public education and into private sector schools and a variety of other things," Dilly said. "What really concerns me is the details will be in the implementation of that particular bill if it should make it through."
Senate Bill 914 was next on Dilly's list, and relates to testing and attendance requirements for private schools.
"The concern here is that they are saying you have no standards, no rules, and you don't have to follow anything and then they're comparing their results to ours with basically no rules," Dilly said.
"They're basically trying to erode every standard or expectation related to what's going on… It's a concern because it's creating an unequal platform for public schools to compete with private schools."
The final bill Dilly went into details about was Senate Bill 705.
"This bill is essentially trying to take the authority away from the state Board of Education," Dilly said. "And that is an actual constitutional component, so there is some question if that would even be constitutionally appropriate. There are some members of the Legislature trying to get around the Constitution and the separation of what we want in the state Board of Education, and I'm very concerned about this one, and boards across that state should be very concerned about it. I think the Legislature is encroaching on our day-to-day operations enough."
Just five days after the Randolph County Board of Education voted, on March 27, to table Dilly's RIF (reduction in force) recommendations until April 22, Tuesday's meeting lasted just 30 minutes, after four five-hour plus evenings of RIF hearings last week. No one spoke during the public comment section of Thursday's meeting.
Last week's decision to table Dilly's recommendations for RIF terminations and transfers was made to provide more time to see whether or not funding for the school system will be coming from the federal and state levels of governments. The 2025 West Virginia legislative session is slated to end on April 12.
The next Randolph County Board of Education meeting will be April 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the BOE office.