CHARLESTON, W.Va. — By law, the eight Regional Education Service Agencies in West Virginia must be dissolved by July 1, 2018, but the director of one of those RESAs tells MetroNews, at this point, it’s not clear how that is going to happen exactly.
“They’ve given us a year to transition to a new process to still deliver the same kinds of goods and services to our counties but with, at this time, no funding,” said Joseph Oliverio, executive director of RESA V which covers the following counties: Calhoun, Jackson, Pleasants, Ritchie, Roane, Tyler, Wirt and Wood.
“We need some funds in order to transition and make this thing work,” he said Tuesday.
Last week, Governor Jim Justice signed HB 2711, a broad education measure, into law.
In addition to abolishing the RESAs along with the Office of Education Performance Audits, it allows accrued school minutes to be counted toward required instructional time; addresses “backpack days” for school work during bad weather, ends K-12 Common Core math and English standards for good in West Virginia along with the tests measuring students on those standards.
Without RESAs, West Virginia will save an estimated $3.5 million in FY2018, but could potentially lose out on $21 million in, what Oliverio called, “flow through money” — a combination of federal and state dollars, including grant funding, for various programs.
That “flow through money,” Oliverio noted, is not guaranteed.
“I don’t think everyone realized the impact that this bill was going to have with regard to the service agencies in the state that were just trying to provide a service to the students, staff and communities,” Oliverio said.
RESAs were first created in 1972 to provide coordinated support, translating to cost savings, for West Virginia’s county school systems.
Under the new law, county school systems are allowed to independently form new regional agencies, known as “education service cooperatives,” to replace the RESAs.
“Any number of two counties through 55 counties could be a part of it,” explained Oliverio.
“One cooperative may decide to do a particular service and offer that statewide, another cooperative may decide just to focus with the six or eight counties that they serve. Counties may belong to multiple cooperatives.” Also, counties could opt to continue without co-ops.
It’s a plan that Oliverio predicted would lead to duplications of services and higher costs for counties.
Since passage of HB 2711 in early April, he’s seen an exodus from his office. Seven people have left in that time and Oliverio expected more resignations, complicating the transition to what comes next amid uncertainty.
“Many of our staff are leaving to go back to counties because they don’t know the future of the cooperatives or the future of RESAs,” he said. He said the departures are making it harder to deliver services and limiting recruitment efforts. “Now, nobody’s willing to fill these positions.”
Oliverio had a request for lawmakers who will return to Charleston Thursday for a Special Session focused on budget work. “It’s not too late to change this, if there’s funding,” he said.
Prior to the start of the 2017 Regular Legislative Session, a legislative audit recommended the elimination of the eight RESAs after determining they were no longer functioning as originally envisioned.
But Oliverio, a longtime educator with more than 30 years of experience who’s been RESA V’s executive director for the past three years, defends their value.
“It (the law change) just doesn’t make sense,” Oliverio said. “When it’s all said and done, the students, staff and communities are the ones that are suffering.”