MORGANTOWN – The Senate Education Committee spent a bit more than two hours Tuesday mulling the House Hope Scholarship bills. Three proposed amendments that failed in the House failed again in committee and the bill passed as-is in a voice vote.
HB 2013 establishes the Hope Scholarship program for state-funded education savings accounts. It will begin as a way to allow public school students to transfer to a private school or be home-schooled. The estimated per-pupil scholarship of $4,600 (a flexible figure based on average state aid per pupil) could be used for a variety of specified educational expenses.
Beginning in 2026, all students in private and home-schools would be eligible for the scholarship if total program participation is less than 5% of statewide student enrollment based on 2023-24 numbers.
Amy Willard, Department of Education school operations officer, told the members the bill’s initial enrollment cap of 2% of statewide student population would make about 5,118 students eligible. A back-and forth with Sen. Mike Romano, D-Harrison, indicated the state aid money leaving the public schools if that number of students opt in would eliminate about 363 teaching positions and 200-plus service personnel.
There are statutory class size limits at the elementary level, she said, and some schools might have to cut services in order to preserve mandatory student-teacher ratios.
When eligibility opens up in 2026, about 22,500 kids will be eligible, costing about $103.5 million.
What county school districts would lose will vary, she said; some schools get $5,000 per student and some rely entirely on local funding, such as Doddridge, and get nothing.
Senators learned nothing in the bill prevents a family from using the scholarship money to send a student to an out-of-state provider, and nothing in the bill spells out what the Department of Education would do if legislative appropriations don’t meet the program’s financial demands.
Romano pointed out six other states have ESA programs and none are as wide open as this one proposes to be. All but one base eligibility on student needs or income levels.
Romano offered an amendment to cap family income levels at $75,000 for a single parent, $150,000 for a couple. This failed in the House and failed here.
“It needs to be targeted to people who need it,” he said while defending it. The state is constitutionally required to provide a thorough and efficient pubic education, not a private education to every citizen.
He then tweaked the amendment to exempt from the cap special needs students, students with individualized education plans, physical or learning disabilities or any other learning impediments.
Opponents to both versions argued that school lunch services aren’t income-based and this would discriminate against children of higher-income families by limiting their choice. Even with the exemptions of the second attempt, they said, learning challenges aren’t income-based.
After that failed, Romano offered an amendment barring discrimination on the basis of races, sex, religion, national origin or disability. It didn’t include sexual orientation, as the failed amendment proposed in the House did. When the question arose, Romano agreed to include a caveat that it didn’t apply to all-boy or all-girl schools.
That amendment failed in a roll-call vote, 5-8.
During discussion, Sen. Ron Stollings, D-Boone, said the bill will take $4,000 to $5,000 per student out of the public schools, which will prove a serious drain. “I’m just not sure we can keep the doors swinging at the schools.”
Committee chair Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, cited her own trials to support the bill. She has five children, two with special needs. The public schools didn’t have the flexibility to meet their needs. She gave up her career and home-schooled, while her husband worked two jobs.
She doesn’t want any kids to fall through the cracks, she said.
Romano lamented that his colleagues voted against the anti-discrimination language, saying it had passed with that wording in previous years. He said he couldn’t support the bill because of that, and because of the burden it will impose on state finances.
“We’re going to continue to suck money out of public education until it falls on its face,” he said.
It goes next to Finance. Finance chair Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, is on Education and voted against Romano’s amendments and for the bill.
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