CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia National Guard’s Mountaineer Challenge Academy continues to be among the state’s most successful education programs and a change in state code is expected to give it another boost.
The academy, operated by the Guard, takes students from the traditional high school setting and places them into a rigorous environment of education and discipline when they are identified as being at risk of dropping out.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin directed the Guard to expand the academy. State Adjutant General James Hoyer says they did so by adding the option of a high school diploma course of study for academy students and it has worked well.
“We’ve run six classes since that time and we have over 750 kids who have received their high school diploma,” Hoyer explained. “These are all kids who had left the school system or were leaving the school system.”
Eighty percent of those students who have pursued a high school diploma received one before leaving Challenge and the balance of those students were so close when they left Challenge, they were able to complete the requirements for graduation through their home county school system.
The success of the Challenge Academy has never been an issue. The funding of the program has become the biggest challenge.
“To grow the program in the budget environment we face in West Virginia we had to look at more than just putting money from General Revenue into the Adjutant General’s account,” Hoyer explained.
The solution approved by the legislature earlier this year allowed the Challenge Academy to share in a portion of the county school systems’ school aid formula funding. Historically when a child left a county school system and went to the Challenge Academy, the state aid formula money stayed with the county school system. Hoyer said the new structure will enable the Challenge Academy to tap into that stream of money to help pay for the students’ education under the Guard’s watch. The qualifier however, is the money isn’t delivered until a student graduates.
“By doing that we hope we tempered some of the challenges it creates for the county,” Hoyer said. “But at the same time what we’ve now developed between Challenge Academy, the National Guard, the state school board, and the county school boards is really a partnership.”
The level of funding the Challenge Academy will receive for each student will be based on the state aid funding formula in the student’s home county. Hoyer said the amounts will vary from county to county, but he added the funding will be sufficient to pay for additional bed space and hire new instructors to handle the increased number of participants.
The state Board of Education approved the policy that will govern the new funding stream in its meeting last week.