“Together for Public Schools” a focus group from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy held a Town Hall meeting May 19 at Phil Gainer Center. Sarah Duncan, who spoke at Kump Center in March, returned to Elkins with a PowerPoint presentation full of information about the harms of using tax dollars for the Hope Scholarship giveaway plan.

There is no accountability for this so-called “School Choice” program. As it stands now, there are no good choices for the majority of West Virginia students. Rich kids in a few cities may get more money to attend private high schools with established records of sending students to the best colleges, but most middle class and poor families will see less and less funding for 90% of WV students who still go to the public schools.

It is clear to me that parents need to become more aware and more actively engaged in local political policies that impact their children. The money crunch is particularly painful for large rural counties like Randolph. The Randolph County BOE has to pay for transporting students long distances or maintain small schools with state required essential services in remote regions.

The WV BOE is now investigating at least ten counties for different reasons, but budget issues are the most prevalent problems. The legislators have made unreasonable choices in Charleston, but county BOE members and superintendents, who are local people of character have been put in an untenable position. An appointed WV State school board does not have a right to interfere in decisions made by duly elected school boards chosen by local people, and all the while a hopeless scholarship is siphoning off funding without having to meet standards of accountability.

Declining enrollment is one of the reasons that problems are compounding for county school systems in West Virginia. Our population has been decreasing for more than 50 years, but the WV school population has fallen more than 11,000 students in the last five years. The Covid-19 pandemic may be one reason for the recent decline in population, but the West Virginia rate of declining student numbers has outpaced this rate in other states.

In order to pay the bills in rural counties, the West Virginia school funding formula needs to be revised. The Center on Budget and Policy reported that state funding pays $5,540 per student and, on average, counties pay $2,250 for an average of $7,790 per student. The amount of local contribution varies widely from county to county, but students in high poverty areas with a large number of students with special needs should receive more funding from the state.

Randolph County needs to pass a school levy in order to provide access to public schools and educational technology that students will need to compete for jobs in the 21st Century.