House Speaker Roger Hanshaw anticipates movement on revising the state’s two-generation-old public school funding formula.
“A number of things have gone into creating the environment that we have right now that we think we’re primed to act,” Hanshaw said on MetroNews Talkline.
This week lawmakers got a primer on school funding proposals by the state Department of Education, receiving possibilities that could amount to an additional $410 million.
Right now, state funding in West Virginia amounts to about $1.406 billion. Various aspects of the proposals would bump that to about $1.816 billion under the framework being rolled out.
Hanshaw said groundwork has been laid by the state Department of Education, and the Legislature has also put significant time into considering school funding. He said the goal is to be ready to act when the legislature convenes for its annual regular session.
“Obviously, a thing that we’ve been working on for a couple years now that we do expect movement on when we convene in January is that we really want to dig into it and tackle some of the challenges that are confronting public education fiscally,” said Hanshaw, R-Clay.
“It’s been a priority of many of ours for a couple of sessions now. We’ve had extraordinary amounts of work go into that over the course of the past two years, including as recently as this past week. So I do expect movement on that.”
Lawmakers have discussed school funding for months, even as increasing numbers of schools close or consolidate around the state. Yet they have not reached a resolution on how to deal with the issue.
Hanshaw emphasized that reform needs to be methodical because public education accounts for about half of the state’s general-revenue budget.
He wants the review to address both how funds are allocated and the policies that drive costs.
“It takes time to decide how you’re going to change a process that allocates literally half — fully half of the general revenue budget of the state of West Virginia is dedicated to this one topic, this one expenditure,” he said.
“So it’s right that we do that methodically and that we do that in a very conscious way, as opposed to just trying something and see what happens. It’s too big and too important of an issue to to rush, and we we’ve not rushed it.”
In recent years, West Virginia has faced widespread school funding shortfalls, driven especially by an enormous deficit in special education costs and leading to school closures and consolidations all over the state.
“That’s one of our one of our largest drivers of increased school costs in West Virginia, so we also want to look at the policy behind the numbers as a part of this effort,” Hanshaw said.
West Virginia schools are largely funded through a seven-step formula that is based largely on student population. Total student registration has dropped by 8,270 pupils compared to the prior year.
Education officials have warned that 8 to 20 schools face closure or consolidation across West Virginia in the coming year.
The draft proposal by the Department of Education includes:
- student funding weights for special education, students whose family incomes qualify at poverty levels, English learners, gifted students and career technical education studets;
- a three-year enrollment average for counties to buffer in case of sudden enrollment drops;
- revised facilities and substitute funding;
- and support for additional operational positions.
The estimated total cost is $410 million.
Of that, increased funding for special education accounts for about $190 million. Adjustments for students with lower socioecoomic status amount to $63.9 million. The enrollment smoothing would be about $50.7 million. Facilities recalibration is estimated to cost $42.8 million.
This is not a final product, and it’s not intended to be. Once the regular legislative session begins in January, lawmakers can pull it apart, keep what has consensus or what’s achievable and hold off on what can’t be accomplished right away.
“I do take seriously the reality that funding the the fixed costs and maintaining the physical infrastructure in an environment of declining school population in the rural counties of West Virginia, which is which is to say most of them, is a challenge, and we can’t deny the reality that continued consolidation is not necessarily the answer everywhere,” Hanshaw said.
“So we don’t want to end up in a place where we’ve got young people, little kids, on on school busses for hours at a time, just getting to and from school. So that’s particularly important to me. But realize that this this effort, the the the goal of redoing and revisiting how we allocate state funding for public education means more than just looking at how we rearrange the chairs on the deck of the ship.”