Hope Scholarship-driven Enrollment Decline has Major Impacts on Public Schools and Students

Nearly 250,000 West Virginia children receive their education in the public school system. High-quality public education helps make the American dream possible—at its best, ensuring a strong educational foundation for all children across race, ethnicity, disability status, gender, religion, and socioeconomic background. In addition to public schools educating the vast majority of children in our state, they are also often the center of our communities—where we gather for events, vote in elections, and watch and participate in sports and extracurricular activities.

A robust body of research shows that increased spending on public education boosts graduation rates and wages in adulthood while reducing future poverty—simply put, directing public funding to our education system has a great return on investment for the future of our children, our communities, and our economy. But due to a confluence of factors in West Virginia including the expiration of pandemic-era federal education funding, declining student enrollment, and a growing school vouchers program, school districts statewide will have less funding going into the 2024-25 school year, leading to what local officials have described as unprecedented levels of staffing cuts. As a result, school districts across West Virginia are making difficult decisions on 2024-25 school year staffing and budgets.

Enrollment Declines Linked to Hope Scholarship

A WVCBP analysis of county-level enrollment data found that 53 of West Virginia’s 55 school districts experienced enrollment loss between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years that will result in reduced state funding for professional educators and school service personnel positions. In eight of those 53 counties, the number of students newly receiving the Hope Scholarship exceeded the enrollment decline, meaning that if not for this school vouchers-style program, the district would not have had negative enrollment decline and lost state funding for staff positions. The percentage of enrollment decline attributable to the Hope Scholarship statewide was 51.9 percent, though it varied dramatically in school districts, ranging from 0.4 percent in Tyler County to 97.1 percent in Cabell County and more than 100 percent in eight counties.[1]

Because the school aid funding formula allocates state funding for school staff based on enrollment, school districts with fewer students will lose professional educators and school service personnel unless they have local or other funds at their disposal to make up for the state funding loss. The net reduction in school staff in the 2024-25 school year based on enrollment changes alone is expected to total approximately 493 fewer professional educators and 327 fewer school service personnel statewide.

The Hope Scholarship is a school voucher-style program that allows families with recent public school attendance to divert their state share of public school funding (currently about $4,900/year) away from the public school system to be used instead for private school or home schooling costs. Proponents of the Hope Scholarship argue that because the student who is using it is no longer in the public school system, the loss of state funding will not negatively harm the school district or the students remaining in the public schools. But the WVCBP’s new analysis debunks this claim, showing that the students remaining in the public school system—again, the vast majority of the state’s total students—will be significantly impacted, via school consolidation, reduced course offerings, and fewer support programs for students with learning and social support needs.

School Districts Forced to Lay Off Staff, Close Schools, and Reduce Supportive Services

In Kanawha County, officials cited an enrollment decline of 530 students over the last year as the driving need to eliminate 82 positions countywide. According to the WVCBP’s analysis, 58 percent of the enrollment loss in Kanawha County is attributable to the Hope Scholarship. In March, the Board of Education voted to eliminate 10 positions at the Chandler Academy, the county’s only alternative education setting for at-risk middle and high school students.

Similarly, Cabell County school officials have presented a plan to transition the county’s alternative learning school, Crossroads Academy, to a virtual school in part due to enrollment decline and subsequent funding loss. The WVCBP’s analysis found that 97 percent of enrollment loss in the county is attributable to the Hope Scholarship.

Parents and families have raised serious concerns in both Kanawha and Cabell counties about how the cuts will negatively impact vulnerable students who need more supports, not fewer, particularly in the wake of pandemic-era learning losses and student behavioral issues. Fewer alternative learning environments and supportive resources could make policymakers even more reliant on harmful, ineffective punishment policies that disproportionately target Black and brown students, students in foster care, and those from low-income households.

Wood County school officials ended the 2023-24 school year over-staffed by 168 employees due to the combined impact of declining student enrollment (a loss of 560 students in two years) and the expiration of ARP-ESSER education funds. According to the WVCBP’s analysis, 57 percent, or 246 of those students lost, were attributable to the Hope Scholarship. Of the positions to be eliminated, half the staff are being terminated and half were offered transfers to another position. One such transfer, a school nurse who was offered a new position splitting her time between multiple schools rather than being full-time in one school as she is currently, argued that only having a nurse part-time in each school would not be in the best interest of students.

Earlier this month the state Board of Education approved a plan by the Harrison County board to close three schools in the district as a result of declining enrollment. One resident who spoke in opposition to the plan made the case that “a lot of communities are worse off now because their schools were pulled from them, not better.” According to the WVCBP’s analysis, nearly half of Harrison County’s enrollment decline was attributable to the Hope Scholarship.

Pocahontas County, one of the eight counties that would have had positive net enrollment gain if not for the Hope Scholarship, is facing similar budget concerns going into the 2024-25 school year, though theirs is likely more attributable to the end of federal ESSER funds than their minimal enrollment decline. Pocahontas County High School students were recently suspended for protesting the rumored potential elimination of teaching positions and, with them, Advanced Placement (AP) math and science courses.  

Our public education system is a top priority for many families across the state, and in the aftermath of the pandemic, our children and teachers are experiencing unprecedented needs to address learning loss, behavioral issues, and other challenges. Reducing professional educators and school service personnel under these circumstances will likely exacerbate these challenges, but school districts have limited ways to raise local resources to offset state funding losses. Policymakers at the state level should prioritize improving the school aid funding formula to reflect the needs and realities of school districts and ensure that our schools have the resources necessary to offer all children the supports they need.

Table 1: Estimated Lost State Funding Formula for Staffing Based on Enrollment Decline by County, 2024-25 School Year Compared With 2023-24 School Year

Table 2: Estimated Percentage of Enrollment Decline by County Attributable to Hope Scholarship

[1] Methodology: The WVCBP analysis compared West Virginia Department of Education data on FTE enrollment in the 2023-24 school year and the 2022-23 school year. We then calculated the enrollment change’s impact on the Public School Support Plan (PSSP) formula to determine how many fewer professional educators and school service personnel would be funded to each county as a result. For the estimates of the impact of the Hope Scholarship on enrollment decline, we assumed that all Hope Scholarship recipients had previously been enrolled in the school district in which they reside and counted in the prior year’s FTE enrollment calculation. We utilized 2023-24 Hope Scholarship applicant data provided to the WVCBP from the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office via a public records request. According to the WVSTO, statewide 89 percent of the 2023-24 applicants for the Hope Scholarship were awarded, so for our calculations we assumed that 89 percent of the applicants in each county were awarded Hope Scholarships.