Cars from the future?
Just like that, a new narrative in the education of the Mountain State’s young people took shape Tuesday morning in the parking lot of a nondescript, white-and-maroon brick building at 763 Chestnut Ridge Road.
That’s when parents began rolling up with their kids in tow, for the first day of classes at the West Virginia Academy.
Make that, the first day of classes ever at the West Virginia Academy.
The charter school, housed in a facility once used by WVU for research, is one of four such schools launching this fall.
Another brick-and-mortar charter is located in Martinsburg and two more will exist solely online, which has proven to a be a popular approach for the schools that aren’t always beholden to traditional avenues in education.
With students in grades 6 through 9 already reporting, morning bell rings this coming Monday for those in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
Enrollment as of Tuesday topped 458, with most of the students coming from Monongalia County, John Treu said earlier. Others come from portions of neighboring Preston and Marion counties.
One for the (history) books
Treu, the West Virginia Academy’s governing board chair and its most-recent president, said the moment wasn’t lost on anyone associated with the charter school effort in Morgantown, once those voices and footfalls began sounding across the main hallway that morning.
“We appreciate the historical nature of our school’s opening, both for our community as well as the state of West Virginia,” he said.
“This is the first time many parents and families have ever had a meaningful choice in public education,” he continued.
“We are confident that putting parents at the center of their children’s education will have a positive impact more broadly throughout West Virginia.”
Choice has been the cornerstone of the charter school debate here since the beginning.
Making the grade (and not making the grade)
Proponents say schools in the state are floundering, and a study released last week by the online marketing firm WalletHub placed West Virginia at 47th in the nation overall — based on metrics from low test scores to low morale (and paychecks) among teachers.
Monongalia County, in contrast, is a bit of an outlier to the above. The school district here regularly tops “Best Of” lists across the state and region.
Residents are also generous at the polls, routinely voting in the affirmative for an education levy that brings in an additional $30 million or better — allowing for a full schedule of advanced placement courses in high school, and esoteric offerings such as conversational Mandarin for elementary-age students.
But that, charter champions say, is in a relatively prosperous county that contains the state’s flagship university, international diversity included.
What about everyone else in West Virginia?
There’s the Hope Scholarship, which would have given 3,000 families who had previously qualified for an outlay of $4,300 — roughly the amount the state spends for each student in public school — to use for private school education, home-schooling, charters and the like.
That was the goal of the measure, which was passed by the state’s Republican-majority Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice.
Public school districts, balked, however, saying they couldn’t recoup what would be gone in those state-aid dollars, should a student transfer out of the district.
Mon’s district, in fact, is losing around $2 million this school year from students here who are now enrolled in the West Virginia Academy.
While the district does have an operating budget of $145 million, that’s still a big take to come out all at once, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said earlier.
“It’s not like a fund we’re sitting on,” he said. “Every dime has been allocated.”
Right now, though, the back-and-forth, like a kid in detention in the back row, is languishing.
‘Thousands of families … in limbo’
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit struck down the Hope measure last month, saying it violated the state’s Constitutional mandate to “provide a thorough and efficient system of free schools” for all.
Meanwhile, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey took it to the state’s new Intermediate Court of Appeals, arguing in his motion for a stay that parents were being denied a fundamental overseeing right on how to direct the education of the children.
The court on Monday said no, however, knocking it back a second time.
“It’s disappointing the Intermediate Court did not see that the lower court’s injunction will undermine the fundamental freedom of parents to choose the best education for their children,” the attorney general said.
“The thousands of families who are set to receive scholarship money from the act will now be in limbo trying to figure out what’s going to happen to their children’s education.”
Morrisey said Wednesday he knows what’s going to happen in his office.
“This is an important law that will benefit hard-working families, and my office will continue to fight to retain this law,” he said. “We will now proceed and move to our next legal options — where we believe we should be successful.”
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