The president of West Virginia’s state school board gave an impassioned speech to say he believes the state has gotten out of balance on “school choice” policies, leading to lower enrollment and historic rounds of public school consolidation.
“In the past decade, we have lost over 35,000 students in public education, all in the name of school choice,” board President Paul Hardesty said near the beginning of a regular meeting today.
Hardesty said he does not object to “school choice” options generally, but his speech suggested the state has gone too far.
West Virginia lawmakers within the past few years have voted to allow charter schools and a Hope Scholarship for families seeking education options outside the public school system.
Hope Scholarship participation grew from 2,333 students during the 2022-2023 school year to 5,443 students during the 2023-2024 school year, and now more than 10,000 students in the current school year. The Hope Scholarship will open to all school-age children residing in West Virginia beginning in the 2026-2027 academic year.
There are currently 233 participating nonpublic schools and microschools in the Hope Scholarship Program, providing a variety of educational options for students.
Hardesty said he had been moved by trends toward more school choice options, declining enrollment and school consolidation to make a fairly rare speech. But Hardesty said he is motivated enough to touch on similar themes over and over again at future meetings.
West Virginia school enrollment plummeted by nearly 13% from 2012 to 2024, a period that overlapped with several factors including the covid-19 pandemic. More than 36,000 students left the public school system during that time.
The state experienced a wave of school consolidations last year, one that state Superintendent Michele Blatt told lawmakers earlier this year was historic. Blatt told lawmakers that she anticipated the trend would continue.
Blatt told members of the House Finance Committee in February that about two dozen school closures or consolidations had been anticipated statewide this year, although local boards had only approved about half that number so far.
At that same February meeting, Uriah Cummings, school financial operations officer for the state Department of Education, described a decrease of about 3,000 students that will affect the school aid formula for the fiscal year that the state is in right now.
Hardesty today said that downward spiral is likely to continue.
The board president described a snapshot of student enrollment that is about to occur.
“We’re getting ready to take a snapshot of the second month enrollment. We’re going to do that on Friday. We’ll have the results in three weeks to see how many more children we have hemorrhaged from our enrollment numbers,” Hardesty said.
“And I think the number will be quite large. And then closures will start in respective counties, and they’ll come before this board.”
Hardesty called on state lawmakers to address the school aid formula, which is shaped largely by student population, to support community schools.
“There’s 134 members of the legislature. They have the oversight. They have the ability to change the school aid formula to recognize these rurally challenged, geographically challenged areas that we speak of,” Hardesty said.
“They have that ability I and this board and this department do not.”