Debra K Sullivan,
Trustee, Greater Kanawha
Valley Foundation
It is in everyone’s best interests to make these schools as strong as they can be.
(excerpted from presentation to The Charleston Rotary Club on October 14, 2024)
Having spent a lifetime in and around schools, I remain steadfast in believing that every child, regardless of circumstance, deserves a good education and that it is society’s primary obligation to provide that. There is nothing we do that is more important.
Public schools operated by county boards of education are the bedrock of our democracy and the path to fulfilling the American Dream. We all benefit from public schools whether we have children of school age now or ever and whether our children attend those schools or not.
Our 55 county school districts enroll nearly 240,000 children, 90% of our school-age population. These children are the face of West Virginia, with all its advantages and disadvantages. They carry their hopes and dreams to class every day, and some also bring anger, anxiety, and the most basic physical needs. Our students represent every race and religion, are healthy and unhealthy, rich and poor and everything in between. They live in comfortable homes and substandard housing. Some have been ravaged by unimaginable trauma. Nearly 14,000 are homeless and increasing numbers are in foster care or kinship care.
Public schools will continue to educate the vast majority of our future workforce, government officials, caregivers, parents, and community members. It is in everyone’s best interests to make these schools as strong as they can be.
Yet state funding of public education has not kept pace with arising needs and legislative mandates, forcing county boards of education to do more with less. Counties face gut- wrenching decisions to consolidate schools, distressing families and ripping the heart out of communities. Teacher and service personnel shortages are common, as salaries and benefit packages lose ground. Bus rides are getting longer, some over an hour each way for even our youngest students. Class sizes, course offerings, and extracurricular activities are affected.
And more.
In addition to 637 county public schools, West Virginia has six brick-and-mortar and
virtual charter public schools authorized by the recently created Public Charter School Board; 25 accredited private schools (including 23 Catholic schools); 114 nonaccredited private schools; thousands of homeschools; and an unknown number of microschools and learning pods which are not required to register with any state agency. Three of the public charter schools are operated by for-profit out-of-state entities.
It is a real mixed bag.
Long-accepted guardrails are jettisoned in the name of school choice. While accredited private schools meet the strict requirements of their national endorsing agencies, other nonpublic schools are governed only by state law and little of that. All are approved to award high school diplomas, with many requiring only high school diplomas for their instructors. Some require submission of some type of student assessment results to state agencies, yet compliance often abysmally low. Health, safety, and fire inspections are not always mandated. Alarmingly, some do not require state and federal criminal background checks for adults working with children.
We risk underfunding or defunding public services that affect all residents when taxes paid into the system are made into personal piggy banks.
The introduction of the Hope Scholarship program in 2021 dramatically changed West Virginia’s educational landscape, contributing to the rise of alternative options at the expense of public schools. This is the broadest school voucher program in the nation. It provides taxpayer dollars to support individual preferences outside of the free educational system, while at the same time expecting public school staff to use their
limited resources to manage choice options selected by parents. With no family income limits, minimal transparency, and little accountability, Hope marks a radical policy shift toward elevating individual choice over the common good.
Hope started with a $10 million yearly allocation. With full implementation close at hand, that number is expected to balloon to $100 million. Is this sustainable? Which state programs — education, human services, commerce, tourism, highways, corrections, whatever — will suffer? With sizable portions of the money being spent out-of-state, how will this affect West Virginia’s economy?
This is not a question of choice but of who pays the bill. Families have always had the freedom to enroll their children in nonpublic schools, but public funds did not
underwrite their personal preferences. Their choices had financial consequences to them, not to children attending public schools.
We risk underfunding or defunding public services that affect all residents when taxes paid into the system are made into personal piggy banks.
Hope Scholarship recipients may spend the money on a laundry list of items: tuition to in-state and out-of-state accredited and nonaccredited private schools, microschools, virtual programs, tutors; vendors offering software, technology, school supplies; summer experiences, horseback riding and karate and music lessons; athletic fees when playing on public school teams that public school athletes must pay from their own pockets; passes to museums and LEGOs – just about anything that could be construed as “educational.”
The cost of Hope Scholarships to public schools is already tremendous and is growing. The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy found that 53 of our counties experienced enrollment loss between the last two school years, resulting in reduced state funding to these counties under the school aid formula. Enrollment decline attributable to Hope Scholarships statewide was 52 percent. In 8 of those counties, the number of students newly receiving Hope exceeded the enrollment decline, meaning that if not for the voucher program, district enrollment would have grown, along with state funding to local schools.
We want our children and grandchildren to believe that they can make good lives in West Virginia or anywhere else they choose. We want others to relocate here,
discovering the good life available in the Mountain State. We want businesses to find a place here, valuing our solid base of well-educated, healthy, diligent workers.
Bolstering our public schools is the surest way to attain those goals. Despite forces pushing against them, the determined, well-intentioned individuals working with our public schools are all-in to make a difference, not just in individual children’s lives but also for the well-being of West Virginia.
Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that democracy is not a perfect system, just the best we have ever found.
Perhaps we should look at public education that way. It has its shortcomings, working against long odds as our schools often do, but we have not found a better system to provide for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Public schools will continue to educate the vast majority of our children. It behooves us to make these schools as strong as they can be.