In spite of the wide ranging challenges that West Virginia public schools are facing such as inadequate funding, an outdated funding formula, and the rapidly expanding Hope Scholarship voucher program, our public school system continues to educate and support the vast majority of children in our state. These ongoing challenges have led to waves of school closures and consolidations, terminations of school employees, and cuts to programs and course offerings as school districts attempt to balance their budgets and remain open.
Hancock County is just one of many West Virginia counties where these challenges have come to a head. The school district is facing a $7 million deficit for the current fiscal year and will likely be unable to make payroll later this month. To address this issue, legislators have proposed a bill to support Hancock County and others that are in financial distress. This bill aims to establish an emergency reserve loan that will be administered by the state school board and cover costs like payroll and operating expenses to allow schools to remain open.
While this effort to quickly address the financial needs of school districts is admirable, the broader challenges plaguing public schools continue to go unaddressed.
But that need not remain the case. There are a few actions that legislators can take to enact meaningful and long-term solutions for our public schools. These include addressing inadequate school funding, modernizing the school funding formula, and reining in the Hope Scholarship.
More than half of West Virginia school districts spend less per student than the national average. Hancock County spends almost $250 less per student, but with an investment of about $784,500 the district can meet the national average. This could fully cover the cost of 10 new classroom teachers, or nine new student support staff (e.g., nurses, counselors), or 17 new service staff (e.g., food service employees, maintenance workers). Alternatively, this could offset the cost of these positions if they are currently funded through local funding or help fund important services and offerings such as special education, student transportation, parent and family supports, community programs, tutoring, and after-school and summer programs.
Even with an excess levy to provide additional local funding to support their community schools, many school districts are still in need of state funding to adequately meet the needs of their students. Annually, Hancock County’s excess levy provides over $8.6 million to support staff costs, legal and medical services for students, social and emotional supports for students, student meals, capital improvements, supplies, and equipment.
If we repurposed the state funding intended for the Hope Scholarship to instead support underfunded public schools, we could increase spending across the state to meet the national average. By repurposing these funds and supplementing what the state is already investing in public schools, we can fund improvements without impacting funding in other school districts, including those that are currently spending at or above the national average.
The current approach to public school funding in West Virginia is outdated and does not sufficiently consider student needs. Research shows that students living in poverty and students with disabilities require more resources and funding to achieve the same outcomes as their peers. However, West Virginia is one of just a handful of states that does not weight for poverty in the funding formula. This leaves high-poverty school districts with less funding than wealthier districts. On average, high-poverty school districts in our state receive $1,412 less per student than low-poverty school districts. West Virginia is also one of about one-third of states that does not include special education funding in the primary funding formula. West Virginia provides supplemental funding to school districts when the cost of special education services exceeds the funds that the district has available. This leaves gaps in funding for special education services that must be filled, often by diverting funds from other aspects of education.
The state can modernize the school funding formula and better meet student needs by adopting weighted funding to provide more funding for high-poverty school districts and for student groups that require more resources, like students with disabilities. West Virginia can also increase the number of teacher and student support positions that are funded to improve staff to student ratios and reduce classroom sizes. In school districts like Hancock County, where four in 10 students are from low-income families and two in 10 students have a disability, these adjustments to the formula would provide much needed state funding.
For Hancock County and many school districts across the state, the Hope Scholarship voucher program has contributed to their local financial challenges as well as the availability of state funding at large. In the first year of the program, there were 45 Hope Scholarship participants in Hancock County. Now in the fourth year of the program, the county is on track to exceed 250 participants, according to data received from the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office via FOIA request; this reflects an increase of nearly six times or 500 percent from the first year of the program to the fourth. At the full voucher amount, 250 participants equate to $1.3 million. This is money that could have otherwise supported public schools.
Over the course of just a few years, the Hope Scholarship has siphoned hundreds of millions of tax dollars to fund private schooling and homeschooling for families that can largely already afford these options. When the budget process started for the current fiscal year (FY 2026), there was a $400 million budget gap that was closed through a combination of measures, including one-time funding and almost $110 million in budget cuts. While the program is budgeted to cost $110 million in FY 2026, just $24.6 million is funded though the regular budget, with 80 percent coming from one-time supplemental funding. And if the Hope Scholarship continues without any guardrails, lawmakers will have to come up with 10 times the amount that they budgeted via the state budget in FY 2026 to cover the nearly $250 million cost for FY 2027.
Lawmakers cannot address the needs of our public schools and provide adequate funding and investment while allowing the Hope Scholarship to continue unchecked. Lawmakers can reign in this program and promote responsible use of state funds by stopping the universal expansion of the program and implementing guardrails including cost and enrollment caps, income limits for applicants, comprehensive public reporting requirements, and location and accreditation requirements for schools.
During the 2026 legislative session, lawmakers have the opportunity to adopt these recommendations and enact meaningful and long-term solutions for public schools, rather than continue to turn to quick fixes and band-aids that leave the public school system that serves 90 percent of West Virginia children underfunded.
