State schools officials twice took aim at West Virginia’s strained school funding, first proposing a new framework for legislative consideration and then taking a formal position that the current school funding system is constitutionally inadequate.
In the first move, state Department of Education rolled out a detailed framework to update West Virginia’s school funding methods, intending for the proposal to be a starting point for legislators to take up.
Then, a little more than an hour later, a majority of state school board members voted today to take an official position to the state Supreme Court that West Virginia’s current school funding system is unconstitutional.
As community schools have had to close or be consolidated all across the state, the adequacy of the state school funding formula has continually arisen.
The latest turn has been a lawsuit asking state Supreme Court justices to conclude the funding system does not meet the state constitutional standard of a thorough and efficient education.
The respondents in the case, and there are lots, are supposed to enter a brief or summary response or brief by the end of this month. After that, the case will be considered ripe for consideration by the West Virginia Supreme Court.
Article XII, Section 1 of the West Virginia Constitution explicitly states, “The Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”
Toward the end of a state school board meeting today, members voted to approve a motion directing the board’s counsel to argue in the school-funding case that the current formula is inadequate. The motion says the current school funding formula does not provide a “thorough and efficient” system of education.
“While it is the legislature’s constitutional responsibility to provide for a thorough and efficient system of free schools, our Supreme Court has held that it is the board’s constitutional duty to ensure the complete executive delivery and maintenance of a thorough and efficient system of free schools,” said board member Scott Rotruck, reading the motion.
“The current school funding formula fails to allow the board to fulfill that duty.”
Board member James Paul objected to the motion, saying it goes too far. Paul said he did not want the board to concede a constitutional failure before examining the claims more closely.
“The motion that we just presented concedes a claim that each of us failed our constitutional duty,” Paul said, adding that he supports a serious review of the school funding formula.
“As a big picture, I think the remedy for the formula is ultimately with the legislature. They’re studying it now, and this is the way forward, not a court order that supervises this board for many years.”
In recent years, West Virginia has again faced widespread school funding shortfalls, driven largely by an enormous deficit in special education costs and leading to school closures and consolidations all over the state.
Education officials have warned that 8 to 20 schools face closure or consolidation across West Virginia in the coming year.
Lawmakers have discussed replacing the enrollment-based funding formula with an updated needs-based tiered system, but all of their proposals have crashed out the past couple of legislative sessions.
In the off season, lawmakers have focused several interim committee discussions on possibilities for reforming the school aid formula.
So today, the Department of Education rolled out its own proposal, intending it as a starting point for legislative consideration.
State Superintendent Michele Blatt said the final draft was just completed earlier this week.
“It was provided yesterday evening to the governor’s office and Senate and House leadership and not only the president and the speaker, but also the House Ed and Finance, Senate Ed and Senate Finance,” Blatt told state school board members.
“So this is a document that puts everything that’s been discussed over the past two or three years, in my opinion, in one place so that we can have further discussions and determine the direction that not only the state board wants to go, but the legislature and the associations.”
A key proposal is establishing a financial smoothing system intended to stabilize enrollment calculations to buffer districts against sudden population declines.
“Especially in today’s climate where we’ve had this massive decline in enrollment over a 10-year period, to me, there has to be some analysis done to be able to to steady the ship, so to speak, smooth out what what’s happening within the funding that’s based upon that enrollment count,” said Uriah Cummings, financial operations officer for the state education department.
The proposal would take a three-year average of school district enrollment, comparing the higher of that three-year average up against the most recent year’s net enrollment.
“The higher of those two numbers would be what the state aid funding formula would be, that base funding amount that would drive funding for the students of that individual school district,” Cummings said.
Another proposal would introduce weighted funding categories targeting specific student needs such as poverty, special education and English language learning. Cummings estimates the proposed special-education weighted funding, on its own, would require about $190 million.
“As a proportion of our general population, it has become more saturated with more costly students, and that doesn’t mean that we should kind of turn a blind eye to that,” Cummings said.
“In my opinion, we need to further support that notion to be able to provide the increased resources necessary to be able to educate all children in the state of West Virginia, which we have the constitutional requirement to do.”
The initiative also addresses operational shortfalls by funding previously unsupported professional positions, like transportation supervisors, and establishing efficiency requirements like shared services. The proposal is also aims to integrate public charter schools into the state aid framework.
Board member Paul asked if there’s a “ballpark estimate of what the bottom line number is is going to require from the legislature if this were enacted.”
Cummings responded, “We have looked at certain aspects of cost, but certainly don’t have enough to be able to to go publicly with at this time in terms of what the total cost or total estimated cost is anticipated to be currently.”
Superintendent Blatt said the next phase will estimate the total cost and the cost of implementing different aspects.
“The whole idea of this is just to have something to start with and a discussion point for not only for our board members but also for all of our educators and everyone in the field, along with our legislators. So this is step one,” Blatt said.
The superintendent said work will continue with “a kind of a phase two and looking to see the total cost versus if they implemented sections of it, what that cost would be to the state.”