Recent proposals from the Trump Administration and Congress aim to cut federal education funding and dismantle the United States Department of Education, contributing to the rising trend of disinvestment from public education. Federal funds support critical programs in West Virginia like Title I, which serves low-income children, Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) funding to serve children with disabilities, and the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program to provide meals to children in school.
Federal funding brings more than $350 million annually into West Virginia’s 55 county school districts, making up a significant portion of local school district budgets and helping to provide much-needed resources to students with higher needs, like those in high-poverty districts or with disabilities. Cutting these funds could mean the loss of teachers, the end of vital support for the most disadvantaged kids, new school lunch fees for parents, and reduced student success and well-being. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), federal funding made up more than one in ten dollars in West Virginia school district budgets in 2019 and nearly one in five dollars in school district budgets in 2022, though that year included pandemic-era ESSER funding.
In 2019, federal funding provided more than $384 million to West Virginia school districts to support students through critical programs including:
Note: while the state received over $462 millionin federal education funds in FY 2019, the above totals account for funds that went directly to the county school districts.
Cutting federal funds for education could mean the end of essential supports for students, additional costs for families, and the loss of teachers and other critical staff. Federal funding is distributed to benefit the students with the greatest need, meaning that high-poverty school districts and districts that serve higher shares of students with disabilities will bear the brunt of the impact if these funds are cut.
In 2019, federal funds made up more than one-tenth of the budget for most West Virginia school districts. Notably, about 27 percent of the school district budget in Clay County was made up of federal funds. If cut, this could place more than 100 teachers and school employees at risk in this county alone. Across the state, over 6,000 teachers and school employees could be at risk of losing their positions if federal funds are cut. School districts in our state are already faced with difficult budgeting decisions due to the diversion of public education dollars to the Hope Scholarship Program, declining state revenues due to tax cuts, and reduced resources from the expiration of federal pandemic-era relief funding. How can we expect to maintain the thorough and efficient system of free schools guaranteed by our state constitution without essential federal funds?
Read Tamaya’s full blog post.
Use our interactive map to find out how much of your school district budget comes from federal funds and how many teachers and school employees could be at risk if this essential funding is cut.
Read Tamaya’s statement in response to President Trump’s signing of the executive order intended to dismantle the Department of Education.
Read this recent article featuring comment from Tamaya to learn more of her insights.
As an educator and parent, I have seen firsthand the power of public schools to help our students achieve brighter futures and bring our communities together. But I have also watched the underfunding and politicization of public education in West Virginia over the past decade and the consequences for our state’s students.
While it is certainly true that schools and funding must adapt to meet the changing needs of students and communities, I’ve never seen any program improve by starving it of funding. Unless policymakers and the public take action now to re-envision school funding and protect community schools, more closures will be on the horizon.
The vast majority of children in West Virginia receive and will continue to receive their education through the public school system, which needs to be equipped and well-resourced to serve them well. School staff work hard every day to meet their students’ needs, but the diversion of public taxpayer dollars to school vouchers (Hope Scholarship), the expansion of charter schools, population decline and deep revenue losses from tax cuts are exacerbating long-existing challenges. Nowhere is this situation more dire than in rural and low-income areas, where county school boards and communities are having to make impossible decisions with limited funding increasingly across the state.
According to KIDS COUNT data, in West Virginia one in five children are food insecure and 25% live in poverty. In the counties I’ve taught in, like Mingo and Roane, those percentages rise to 37% of kids living in poverty and one in three being food insecure. Our schools are not just teaching reading and math — they are providing essential services to these kids like breakfast and lunch, and some even offer health clinics.
Public schools offer a gathering place for athletic events, dance recitals, and more. And notably, they are often among the largest employers and economic drivers within their communities. That means the result of a school closure is not just long bus rides for students—it is also the loss of the heart of the community and one of the most important factors families look at when considering moving to this state.
Legislators and the public must consider whether the expansion of the Hope Scholarship vouchers program is fiscally responsible at a time when our public schools are already under-resourced. Should we spend public tax money on a program that has practically no reporting requirements and that allows parents of any income level the option to purchase private music lessons or Clay Center memberships as public schools across the state are closing their doors, reducing extracurricular options, and laying off arts and music teachers, counselors, nurses, and custodians? Should students be forced to sit on buses for over 3 hours a day to simply access their education?
If we do have the capacity to increase funding for education, wouldn’t it be better spent supporting the public school districts that are struggling to keep their community schools staffed and open — public schools that almost 90% of the families in West Virginia have selected as their school choice?
This is a critical moment for state lawmakers to fulfill their constitutional mandate: “the Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.” To me and to most West Virginia families, that means investing in community schools and giving all students the opportunity to receive a quality education — especially those who live in rural areas with poor internet, have special education needs, live in poverty or that have other circumstances that make public school their only viable “choice.”
I hope that our legislators will halt any plans to expand the Hope Scholarship voucher program, which is expected to balloon to over $100 million in costs this coming year and then up to $300 million the following year. I urge them to strengthen reporting requirements for this program so taxpayers can see who is benefitting, as well as direct available funding into the public school system that so many students and families in the Mountain State rely upon.
Not adequately funding public schools is simply shirking responsibility and giving away $5,000 coupons does not abdicate West Virginia from its constitutional responsibility. We are approaching a point of no return — if state legislators do nothing, there will be an even greater wave of school closures over the next one to two years. And once a school closes, it rarely reopens. I fear what that means for the future of our state’s students.
Read Sarah’s full op-ed.
When lawmakers make sentences longer, West Virginians pay twice – first, at the local level through higher jail bills paid by the county, then again at the state level through increased prison costs.
If a person is convicted and sentenced to prison, each additional year in prison costs the state $35,452 per person.
But higher penalties also affect local county budgets on the front-end of the criminal process. Because the potential sentence is a factor in setting a bond, higher penalties mean higher bonds. The higher the bond, the more likely a person will be sent to jail to await their trial.
When a person is incarcerated pretrial, counties pay the state a “per diem” rate for each day the person remains in jail. These county jail bills ($177.1 million over the last four years ) have been the subject of state Supreme Court cases, county commission meetings, and countless legislative committees.
Nonetheless, lawmakers have proposed more than 200 bills that would either create a new criminal offense or add more time to existing criminal penalties.
A look at penalty-enhancing legislation that has advanced beyond committee reveals that these bills tend to come from lawmakers representing counties that are least-affected by jail bills.
The Breakdown
There would be plenty of counties who feel the financial impact. But none more so than the 20 counties whose jail bills equal at least five percent of their total budgets. In Webster, Nicholas, Lincoln, Mingo, McDowell, and Marion counties, jail bills account for at least 10 percent of their budgets.
Perhaps most likely to be harmed is Clay, the county with the smallest budget in the state ($1.7 million). Last year, Clay County used a whopping 286.3 percent of its allotted jail days, resulting in a jail bill that was equal to 39.9 percent of the county’s total budget. Today, Clay County faces a jail bill debt that is roughly twice the value of its annual budget.
It is not just the costs that are being ignored.
It is the years of evidence that extra penalties do not deter crime. Plus, research has shown that jailing people pretrial and long prison terms for drug offenses actually increase the likelihood of future arrest.
West Virginia lawmakers keeping turning to costly jails and prisons for problems those places cannot solve, but may make worse.
And this year, they aren’t even willing to ask for the bill.
Read Sara’s full blog post.
Access the tables featured in the blog post.
Read this recent article, featuring insight from Sara, detailing lawmakers’ efforts to increase penalties for drug offenses.
This legislative session at least four bills have been introduced that would abolish or privatize the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA). All seem to be rooted in one of two premises: (1) health insurance could be better and more affordable if privatized; (2) the state no longer wants the expense of self-insuring employees anymore. If the former, lawmakers are likely underinformed about the cost of health insurance on the private market, both in terms of premiums and out-of-pocket costs employees would be forced to absorb. If the latter, they would be ending a decades-long commitment from the state to public employees that while wages are modest compared with other states and the private sector, their benefits will be of the highest quality.
HBs 2965 and 2968
HBs 2965 and 2968 would end PEIA and “redirect” current costs to public employees in the form of monthly Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions of a flat $1,100. Because HSA contributions must be paired with an HSA-eligible health plan and no such plan is contemplated in the legislation, it is likely the bill sponsors meant to refer to Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs). HRAs are health plan contributions that reimburse an employee’s medical expenses up to a maximum dollar amount, and these contributions may include premiums and cost-sharing for individual health insurance coverage.
This change would mean public employees would no longer benefit from the health insurance prices available to large employer groups/economies of scale. Instead, they’d have to purchase a full price plan on the individual market.
In a situation where PEIA was converted to this type of program, most public employees and their families would likely have to pay directly for health costs, incur significant risk going uninsured, or purchase health insurance on the individual market, where they’d be ineligible for tax credit subsidies through the Affordable Care Act that helps make plans more affordable (in some rare cases, they would be eligible for subsidies but would have to forfeit the HRA reimbursements).
This is where we can see that the $1,100/month envisioned in this legislation does not go very far. The infographic below provides some examples of full-price health insurance plans on the individual market.
HB 2623 and SB 426
These bills both seek to privatize PEIA, requiring the state to contract with a group health insurance provider. If these bills keep the current 80/20 employer/employee split, it is unlikely that they would result in savings to the state or to the employee, as plans on the employer market in West Virginia have higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs on average.
In FY 2025, the average total PEIA health insurance premium for employee-only coverage was $741/month, with an average deductible of $510. In calendar year 2024, the average monthly premium for employer-sponsored coverage in West Virginia was $766/month, with an average deductible of $1,931.
For employee plus dependents coverage, the average total health insurance premium in PEIA in FY 2025 was $1,551/month, with an average deductible of $1,037. In calendar year 2024, the average monthly premium for employer-sponsored coverage in West Virginia was $2,209/month, with an average deductible of $4,457.
Under these scenarios, assuming the state kept the commitment to an 80/20 cost-sharing split, the state could actually see higher insurance costs for comparable coverage or employees could expect much higher out-of-pocket costs.
While growth in PEIA costs have been a longtime concern of policymakers and the public, data shows that PEIA costs grow much more slowly than small group commercial coverage in West Virginia. The only insurance program in the state with lower annual growth is Medicaid.
PEIA is an incredibly important program for over 250,000 West Virginians who rely on it for health coverage. Policymakers must keep their commitment to providing high-quality health insurance for the public servants in our state by getting serious about permanent, sustainable funding mechanisms for the program.
Read Kelly’s full blog post.
You can look up how you would be impacted by visiting healthcare.gov/see-plans (make sure you look at full-price plans).
Elon Musk and the Trump administration are illegally firing federal employees who serve West Virginian veterans, seniors, farmers, and small businesses; keep our food, water, national parks, and workplaces safe; and carry out critical medical research, emergency response, and disaster relief missions. Federal employees and their families are also our neighbors who live, work, and send their children to schools across the Mountain State, spreading the impact of these attacks to every single West Virginian community.
Who are Federal Employees in West Virginia?
The federal workforce consists of roughly 3 million employees, most of whom (98.4 percent) live in the states.
Attacking federal employees means cutting West Virginia jobs, services, and specialized expertise that is very difficult to replace.
Federal employees carry out agency missions that underpin our entire economy and do jobs that often require very specific experience or training. For example, Social Security offices serve seniors throughout the state. On average, federal employees have more experience and education than the workforce at large.
Attacking federal employees also means attacking large numbers of veterans, women, workers with disabilities, workers of color, and union members. Due to strong equal employment policies, union contracts guaranteeing equal pay for equal work, and programs to recruit workers who have completed military service, the federal workforce is very diverse. Historically, federal employment has offered important opportunities to women and workers of color—in some states playing a central role in building the Black middle class.
Read Sean’s full fact sheet, made in partnership with our colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute.
On Saturday, August 3, 2024, a Harrison County sheriff’s deputy arrested Marissa Crim in downtown Clarksburg. In a criminal complaint filed that day, the deputy wrote that he saw Ms. Crim make an improper turn in a car with a registration that had expired in June.
After stopping her car, the deputy learned Ms. Crim’s license was suspended. He arrested her for the misdemeanor of driving with a revoked license.
According to the deputy’s complaint, he contacted Ms. Crim’s grandfather to pick up her car, then Ms. Crim was “processed and fingerprinted and then transported” to North Central Regional Jail (NCRJ).
NCRJ is West Virginia’s most overcrowded regional jail. The Doddridge County facility was originally built to house 400 people. But at the beginning of August 2024, NCRJ had more than doubled that capacity, housing 835 people.
When an officer makes an arrest like the deputy in this case, the person arrested is supposed to be brought before a magistrate in the county where the arrest occurred. During this “initial appearance,” the magistrate reviews the officer’s allegations, decides whether there is a probable cause for an arrest, and if there is, then sets a bond.
The court documents are silent on why the deputy did not take Ms. Crim to a magistrate but instead drove 30-minutes away from downtown Clarksburg to deliver her to NCRJ.
According to her obituary, Ms. Crim died on Sunday, August 4th – the day after her arrest.
Deadly State Jails
In the last decade, West Virginia jails were the deadliest in the country. But tragic, preventable deaths continue to occur in the current decade. West Virginians may now be familiar with the staggering number of deaths at Southern Regional Jail, where at least 27 people have died since 2020.
But the second deadliest jail over that period was North Central Regional Jail. Since the beginning of 2020, at least 19 people have died in NCRJ’s custody.
When a person dies in one of their facilities, the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) does not release a statement. There is no public acknowledgement of a family’s loss. No assurances to conduct a thorough investigation. Instead, journalists and concerned citizens must make a public records request to find out how many people have died in the state’s custody. Even then, DCR does not disclose the names of people who died, making it near-impossible to identify them.
Official Report Does Not Add Up
On September 25, 2024, the DCR Commissioner’s Office responded to a public records request for a “log of all people who died in the custody of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation” during the month of August.
DCR reported three deaths in its custody in a single month: a 43-year-old man who died in Northern Correctional Center (Marshall County) on August 14, a 36-year-old man who died two days later at South Central Regional Jail (Kanawha County), and a 53-year old man who died on August 28 at Mt. Olive (Fayette County).
Marissa Crim was not on the list.
One may point out that Ms. Crim did not die at NCRJ, but instead at a hospital. However, the request to DCR explicitly asked for any deaths that occurred under Ms. Crim’s exact circumstances (“This request includes people who died following a DCR administrative release, as well as any people who died after a transfer from DCR to an ambulance, a hospital, or other medical facility.”).
Further, and perhaps most importantly, until her death Ms. Crim was in DCR custody. If she had not died, but instead woke up in the hospital, she would not have been free to leave the hospital and go home. In fact, walking out of the hospital would likely lead to a criminal charge of escape.
But even if the lawyer responding to public records requests has a distorted understanding of custody, the jail staff did not.
The day after Ms. Crim died, an assistant prosecuting attorney from Harrison County filed a motion to dismiss the two-day old misdemeanor charge. In the space provided for the motion’s basis, the prosecutor wrote: “Jail informed defendant died in custody.”
Five Years for the Truth to Emerge
Perhaps North Central Regional Jail did not inform the Commissioner or the legal staff who respond to public records requests about this death in its custody. This would not be the first time NCRJ gave misleading or insufficient information about a person who died in its care.
A few weeks after Ms. Crim died, a Kanawha County jury heard a civil case regarding another NCRJ death. In July 2019, 26-year-old Zachary Bailey entered NCRJ around 8:00 p.m. By midnight, he had died.
DCR did reveal Mr. Bailey’s death in their official tally, reporting that his death was an overdose caused by “Drug/alcohol intoxication.”
Five years later, at the August 2024 civil trial, a former NCRJ correctional officer (CO) testified to a different reason for Mr. Bailey’s death. Aaron Parker told the civil jury that he was working at NCRJ in July 2019 when he heard a call for officer assistance. When Parker arrived at the jail’s admission area, he saw a supervisor holding Mr. Bailey in a chokehold and another CO hitting him. As he and other COs arrived, they piled “on top of Mr. Bailey” for what Parker told the jury was “about seven minutes.”
According to Parker, Mr. Bailey told the COs he couldn’t breathe. Then as the minutes passed, Mr. Bailey’s body “started convulsing” before he turned “purple from head to toe.” After Mr. Bailey’s body went still, Parker told the jury that the supervisor in charge of the jail that night said, “Not so tough now are you, fucktard.”
The day after Parker’s testimony, DCR agreed to settle the lawsuit with the maximum offer allowed by the state: $1 million.
But missing is any reflection from the state about how Mr. Bailey’s and Ms. Crim’s deaths could have been prevented. Agencies who claim the mantle of “public safety” have failed to show us that they are actively working to prevent harm to people in their custody.
Where do we go from here?
Current Oversight is Not Enough
In 2023, lawmakers created an Inspector General position for the Department of Homeland Security – the cabinet-level department that oversees DCR. Then-Governor Jim Justice appointed Mike Honaker, one of the lawmakers who voted to create the Inspector General role, to fill the position.
Two years later, the Department of Homeland Security claims there are no public records of any reports produced by the Inspector General. This lack of transparency isn’t cheap: West Virginians pay the Inspector General a salary of $85,000 per year for him to not tell the public what he has been doing.
Even Effective Oversight Wouldn’t Solve the Problem
The most transparent watchdog could not solve the fundamental problem – the state has become increasingly comfortable with jailing people. Last fall, DCR Commissioner William Marshall described NCRJ’s overpopulation to lawmakers, explaining: “…we don’t have the ability to put ‘no vacancy’ signs on our facilities, so we have to take who we get.”
The commissioner is right. DCR does not control who comes into their jails.
An Over-reliance on Incarceration
That decision belongs to magistrates and judges, who last year, handed down 2,470 years’ worth of days in state jails to people serving misdemeanor sentences or awaiting trial. On any given day more than half of people in jail are there because they cannot afford the bond set.
Bond is not supposed to be a punishment. Instead, magistrates and judges are required by the constitution and state law to make an individualized assessment of the person arrested, then set the least restrictive bond designed to ensure safety and a person’s appearance at all future court dates.
Recent legislation has made it likely that more and more people will spend more and more time behind bars.
In 2021, the legislature eliminated bond review hearings for felony cases – in practice this has meant that people who could not afford their bond would have to wait days or weeks before they had a meaningful hearing with an attorney representing them. Two years later, a law made it cheaper for counties to send people to jail to await trial. Then last year, the Senate passed a bill that would have increased bond amounts in many cases.
The evidence is clear that jailing people pretrial makes us less safe: it does not deter crime but does increase the likelihood of future arrest. We are doing this to ourselves despite decades of declining crime rates. As a data analyst wrote in December, violent and property crime in 2024 “were likely amongst the lowest rates recorded since the 1960s and 1970s.”
West Virginia can do better.
Counties can take advantage of existing laws and rules to help them safely reduce the number of people exposed to overcrowded jails (and save money while doing it). Courts can set quick bond hearings and conduct regular reviews of people jailed prior to trial.
Lawmakers can reinstate a 2020 law that required a magistrate or judge to review bonds that were set without a formal hearing.
But the real test will happen in the coming weeks as the legislative session winds down. This session more than 185 bills have been introduced that create new criminal offenses or increase existing criminal penalties.
Will we continue to turn to the criminal legal system for problems it cannot solve? Will the crisis of jail deaths and the crisis of hiding information about jail deaths persist?
It took Mr. Bailey’s mother five years of fighting DCR head-on before one of the officers who participated in her son’s death told the truth. This is a system that will not budge unless it is forced to do so by those of us who value life.
Read Sara’s full blog post.
Congress is moving fast on budget plans that could put critical safety net programs—Medicaid, SNAP, and other essential services—at risk. Right now, lawmakers in both the U.S. House and Senate are considering budget proposals that could lead to devastating cuts to the programs that thousands of West Virginians rely on for food, health care, and economic security.
These cuts would disproportionately impact families, seniors, and children in our state, threatening access to health care, food assistance, and other essential services—all to finance tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. We can’t let this happen.
Take Action Today: Use our form to contact West Virginia’s congressional and Senate delegation and tell them to reject any budget proposal that cuts funding for Medicaid, SNAP, and other federal safety net programs. Our elected officials must prioritize the well-being of West Virginians, not corporate interests and tax breaks for billionaires.
