CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The leader of a successful charter school in West Virginia is telling state lawmakers that money and oversight are main concerns.
Morgantown-based West Virginia Academy Chairman Jon Treu testified before the House Educational Choice Subcommittee Friday and said charter public schools are treated differently in both areas compared to traditional public schools across the state.
Traditional public schools have access to funds from property taxes, funds through the School Building Authority, levies, and bonds, creating a disparity, according to Treu. Treu said that’s not consistent with the charter school law that said charter students are as important as public school students and funding levels should be comparable.
“In 2023 and 2024 we brought on some of our federal funding online; a lot of the federal funding is reimbursement-based,” Treu said. “So, that funding increased us to $10,600, so we were only $5,000 below.”
The lack of parity has made the West Virginia Academy unable to compete with public schools in terms of salary, Treu said. As the school year began this year, Treu said when the public school was able to offer his faculty and staff higher salaries, all he could do was fill the holes that were left as carefully as he could.
“First, they said we wouldn’t be able to get anybody that’s qualified, and now they seem very interested in hiring everybody that we hire,” Treu said. “Again, 20 percent of our faculty and staff were hired away at the beginning of the year by Mon County Schools, and the average increase in pay for each one of those individuals was about $10,000.”
Enrollment at the West Virginia Academy is estimated to be about 250. At $5,000 less received per student, the academy is receiving $1.25 million just based on the funding formula versus public schools.
“When you’re looking across 200 students, that’s a huge number,” Treu said. “We’re talking about millions of dollars less every year, year in and year out, that we get compared with traditional public schools that we’re competing with and not only competing with, but beating.”
Treu said they have successfully navigated hundreds of hours of oversight from the state Board of Education. He told the lawmaker the additional oversight has been noticed within the organization, but the results show they have scored higher in some areas of the balanced scorecard than public schools nearby and the state average for all schools.
“Traditional public schools just have to keep the West Virginia Department of Education happy, and we have to keep the Department of Education happy and the Professional Charter School Board,” Treu said. “So, we’re actually more highly regulated in some ways, which was not the intent of the legislature.”
He said when a specific area is identified for inspection, they always get the leader or the top inspector. According to Treu, employees at the West Virginia Academy with prior public school experience have noted and asked about the extra scrutiny.
“Interestingly enough, individuals from our school have worked in traditional public schools, and they said they didn’t know she actually got out of Charleston,” Treu said. “Well, they do when they’re assessing the West Virginia Academy.”