As West Virginia’s newly-established Professional Charter School Board takes more steps to get organized, a private group called Mountain State Learning Solutions met to prepare its application to provide virtual charter school options statewide.
Mountain State Learning Solutions, a private organization, had an open meeting via teleconferencing on Thursday afternoon to approve the application it will submit.
The organization plans to partner with K12/Stride Inc. to provide one of two virtual charter schools statewide.
Doing so would require approval by the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board, which meets at 9 a.m. Friday.
That board’s agenda includes hiring an executive director, creating a budget, obtaining office space, establishing a website, handling applications and securing counsel.
West Virginia has no charter schools so far, after passing a state law allowing them in 2019.
The Legislature this year expanded that law to allow more charter schools and to expand the ways they could apply or appeal.
House Bill 2012 increased the number of locally-operating charter schools that could be approved in a three-year period from three to 10. And it laid the groundwork for charter schools that would operate virtually.
Previously, county school boards were authorizers for charter schools. The bill added a West Virginia Professional Charter School Board as an authorizer.
A West Virginia legal organization last week gave notice of its intent to sue over new laws expanding charter school possibilities.
The brief letter from Mountain State Justice indicated the new law expanding charter schools possibilities, House Bill 2012, will be challenged on grounds that it violates the West Virginia Constitution‘s section that says “no independent free school district or organization shall hereafter be created except for the consent of the school district or districts out of which the same is to be created, expressed by a majority of voters voting on the question.”