The House of Delegates passed a bill moving the funding schedule for the Hope Scholarship to quarterly, rather than twice a year.
The bill passed the House on a 91-1 vote and now goes to the state Senate.
That is scaled way back from changes that were proposed just a few weeks ago.
Earlier this year, the Finance Committee rolled out a bill aimed at more broadly refining the Hope Scholarship.
The bill would have trimmed Hope Scholarship expenses by capping the amount to families and refining allowable expenses to categories of tuition, curriculum and technology. That bill also would have required standardized testing for Hope Scholarship recipients intended to compare academic achievement with public schools students.
As the bill kept bouncing from agenda to agenda with no action, the governor, the state treasurer and homeschool families expressed displeasure. Now, only the quarterly funding proposal remains.
“So this is very different from the bill that was first originated in the finance, right?” asked Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha.
With this scaled back bill, the program moves to a quarterly deposit schedule: August 15, Oct. 15, Jan. 15 and April 15.
The state funding cycle for the Hope Scholarship has often resulted in a late-summer logjam.
Right now, one half of the total annually required deposit is made no later than August 15, and the remaining half is made no later than Jan. 15.
The August 25 date has been right after state starts a new fiscal year, so that has resulted in a complicated situation for state finances.
For families buying school supplies — particularly homeschool families — the cycle often results in delayed purchases when they would normally be wanting to start the latest round of lessons.