One House committee ran legislation that would provide more financial support for public schools, and another ran legislation for pay raises for educators, service personnel and State Police employees.
The House Education Committee started dicussinng HB 5453 to modify the school aid funding formula. The bill will also go to the House Finance Committee for further consideration.
In December, the state school board approved consolidations and closures of more than a dozen schools across six counties. Today, the state board agreed to two more closures in Wayne County. The state also experienced a wave of school consolidations last year.
“This bill was the result of a lot of people asking for changes in the state aid formula,” said Delegate Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, the former education committee chairman who is the lead sponsor of the bill.
House Bill 5433 would establish block grants of $8,000 per enrolled student. There’s a floor, so counties with fewer than 1,200 enrolled students would be funded at least for that number.
“We would try to make this as simple as possible, and not Christmas tree all this,” Ellington said.
The bill also includes supplemental funding for special needs students. Special education costs, which often involve one-on-one learning or nursing staff, have been a growing financial consideration for public schools.
“Honestly, this could be the most important bill we work on this year,” said Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha.
More work is anticipated for the bill. Also, the state Senate has been considering bills with similar concepts.
“It takes the current school aid formula, and it adapts it and makes it flexible to the various needs of counties to the greatest degree it can,” said Howard O’Cull, executive director of the West Virginia School Board Association.
“And I think it begins to look at school aid formula, keeping the structure and the architecture of that perhaps, but then looking at the changing needs that we have and the changing in enrollment.”
The House Finance Committee, earlier in the day, took up and advanced HB4765, the teacher, school personnel and State Police pay raise.
The pay scales for those categories of state workers are all specified in state code. So when those workers receive a raise, legislation is necessary to adjust the pay scales.
This represents an average 3% pay raise. The cost of salary increases for professional educators, service personnel and student support personnel is anticipated to be $47,701,265.
The other part of the bill increases salaries for members of the West Virginia State Police and for forensic laboratory civilian employees whose compensation is set by statute. Civilian employees whose salaries are not statutorily established are excluded from the cost estimate. The projected fiscal impact for fiscal 2027 is $1.6 million.