The Hope Scholarship Program was established in West Virginia in 2021 as an expanded school voucher-style program which diverts taxpayer funds from the public school system to families who can use them for private school or homeschool-related costs. Research shows that these programs primarily benefit families whose children were never enrolled in public schools. After ballooning in cost over the first two years of the program, a recent policy decision by the Hope Scholarship Board to allow year-round enrollment into the program likely means costs will grow even faster—potentially presenting a challenge for lawmakers to budget adequately for the program.
Earlier research from the WVCBP shows that the students who remain in public schools—about 90 percent of students in our state—are significantly impacted by the enrollment losses and subsequent declines in funding leading to school consolidations, reduced course offerings, fewer support programs, and fewer teachers and support staff. Kanawha County—the state’s largest school district—lost over 500 students last school year. As a result, over 80 positions were in jeopardy for the 2024-25 school year and the Board of Education recently voted to close and consolidate two middle schools after this year. Futher, four elementary schools remain at risk of closure and consolidation.
West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship Program is not the first or only voucher-style program in the country, but it is unique. The Hope Scholarship has no caps on program cost or overall enrollment. As a result, the costs of the program have risen significantly over the past three years, with more cost increases on the horizon due to the universal expansion of the program slated for 2026. Additionally, with the recent expiration of federal relief funds in September and further tax cuts taking effect in January, public schools are faced with exacerbated financial strain and uncertainty going forward.
Research on school voucher programs in several states illustrates the significant and rapid rise in costs caused by these programs even when they start with limited eligibility. In its first year, the Hope Scholarship Program was budgeted for approximately $23.4 million and disbursed nearly $9.2 million in awards. The following year, the program budget rose to almost $24 million while the amount disbursed to families nearly tripled to an estimated $26.9 million. Now going into its third year, the Hope Scholarship Program is expected to exceed its budget yet again. The budget for this year is $45.5 million compared to an estimated $50.1 million being disbursed to families. Notably, this estimate is based on the number of scholarships awarded as of September 30 and could grow throughout the year due to the newly adopted year-round application model of the program. With its current trajectory involving eligibility expansion to all students in the state, Hope Scholarship costs are projected to dwarf early cost estimates of the program.
The year-round application model allows families to apply for the program throughout the school year with prorated scholarship award amounts based on when they apply. According to the Hope Scholarship Board, as of September 30, approximately 565 applications were being processed and 10,250 students were awarded scholarships for the 2024-25 school year (an increase from the July 1 count of 9,980 scholarship students and applications under review). This number is only expected to climb as many students recently met the 45-day public school attendance requirement and numerous new applications have been submitted.
This model makes it difficult to accurately estimate and budget for the cost of the program. Only four months into the current fiscal year, the Hope Scholarship Program has already reached a $4.6 million funding gap that could require additional state budget allocations unless there are available carryover funds from previous years.
Arizona’s universal school voucher program cost the state approximately $700 million last year. This is nearly four times the cost of the previous targeted voucher program, $188.8 million. The exponential growth in the cost of this program played a significant role in the $1.4 billion budget shortfall that resulted in cuts to funding for public education, community colleges, universities, water and roads earlier this year. Year-round enrollment is also driving significant growth in the cost of the program. Last school year from September 30 to March 31, participation in Arizona’s voucher program rose by over 8,500 students.
The year-round application model also poses significant disruptions for public schools which are already faced with funding and enrollment hardships. State funding for public schools in West Virginia is highly dependent upon student enrollment. The losses in enrollment due to increased Hope Scholarship participation will be felt by public schools next year through reduced funding, school closures and consolidations, and staff terminations and transfers.
Public education is at the heart of many communities and serves as a connection point for children and families across social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Children in our state deserve high-quality and equitable education. To achieve that goal, state policymakers need to halt the rapid expansion of the Hope Scholarship and implement commonsense guardrails on the program through cost caps, enrollment caps, and a limited application period.
Read Tamaya’s full blog post.
Read this recent article, featuring research from the WVCBP, for further details on the potential harms of Hope Scholarship expansion.
A few months ago, lawmakers on West Virginia’s jail oversight committee heard a familiar complaint: the jail bills are too high. One county commissioner after another appeared before the committee with the same request: please don’t make us bear the full cost of our jail bill.
The jail bill saga started decades ago. In 1985, West Virginia established a regional jail system to replace county-run jails, once described as “anachronisms and totally unfit for human habitation.” Between 1989 and 2005, West Virginia opened its 10 regional jails. The state paid for day-to-day operations by charging counties a “per diem” rate for each day they jailed a person who had not been convicted of a crime or was serving a misdemeanor sentence.
County jail bills – and specifically, counties’ desire to avoid paying them – have been the subject of state supreme court cases, county commission meetings, and countless lawmaker discussions. Thus, for the last decade, state officials artificially capped the per diem at $48.25, even as real-world costs continued to grow. Several years ago, lawmakers changed the law so that the state would assume jail costs when a person is convicted of a crime – as opposed to the later date of sentencing – saving counties weeks or months of jail bills in those cases.
Despite these subsidies, by Fiscal Year 2023, county jail bills totaled $44.7 million, with eight counties owing a combined debt of $8.9 million.
A New Law with the Same Results
In 2023, lawmakers could not hold off a per diem increase any longer. They passed House Bill 3552, which raised the per diem by more than six dollars. But under pressure from counties, lawmakers included a new jail bill formula meant to simultaneously cut the actual amount counties paid.
Under the new formula, each county was assigned a pro rata (or proportional) share of jail days based on its population. For the first 80 percent of jail days used in a year, the county pays only 80 percent of the per diem rate. After a county reached 80 percent of its pro rata share of jail days, the county pays the full per diem. If a county exceeds its pro rata share, then the county pays 120 percent of the per diem for each extra jail day.
By August 2024, when lawmakers convened to hear the impact of H.B. 3552, it seemed to be a lose-lose policy for county and state officials.
County commissioners reported that jail bails continued to strain county budgets. An Upshur County commissioner said about 1 out of every 10 county dollars went to pay jail bills. A Nicholas County commissioner noted that if his county had to make cuts to accommodate rising jail bills, they would likely cut from what communities cherish most: senior centers, little leagues, community centers, food bank support, and wages for county employees.
A state budget official testified that before H.B. 3552 went into effect, the regional jail system had an operating surplus of $1.9 million. One year later, the jail system was facing an $18.6 million deficit.
What the Jail Bill Debate Hides
Over the last few years, the public has seen what happens when government ignores the actual costs of operating a jail system.
People in state regional jails endured black mold and broken toilets. They went days without toilet paper or a shower. They showered in cold water, dodged exposed electrical wires, and slept on concrete floors. During the decade the per diem stayed the same, state jails were named the deadliest in the country. We will never know the harm thousands of people suffered because they were warehoused in facilities “unfit for human habitation.”
These jail bill subsidies obscure something else.
When the state gives a discount on incarceration, counties do not have to confront the real problem: they are jailing too many people.
Although H.B. 3552 was supposed to incentivize counties to use fewer jail days, it has done the opposite. Counties used up more than 901,000 jail days in Fiscal Year 2024, an increase of more than 6,500 from the year prior. Put another way, last year West Virginia counties held citizens for the equivalent of 2,470 years for misdemeanor sentences and pre-trial detention.
By choosing to name jail bills as the problem, our elected officials treat incarceration as inevitable.
The Actual Problem: An Addiction to Incarceration
West Virginia’s jail population should be shrinking. The state has been in population decline since the 1950s. There has been an overall decrease in violent and property crimes over the last two decades.
The state’s 10 regional jails were originally designed to house up to 2,883 people. But at the end of October 2024, there were 4,753 people in jail.
Three-fifths of people in jail are either legally innocent and awaiting trial or serving a misdemeanor sentence. Each day these 2,904 people spend in jail is a day paid for by the counties.
For years, policymaking has focused on how to split up the costs of incarceration, instead of how to reduce incarceration.
What can elected officials do instead?
Better Implementation of Existing Rules
It may be a surprise that there are already laws and rules in place to limit unnecessary incarceration. But the implementation of these varies from county to county and sometimes from judge to judge.
For county officials concerned about jail bills, there are a few court practices they can monitor to ensure that existing rules are being implemented.
1. Bond Review Hearings for Misdemeanors. When a person remains incarcerated on a misdemeanor offense because of their inability to pay a bond, West Virginia Code § 62-1C-1a(c) states the court “shall hold a hearing within 5 days of setting the initial bail” to review the bail. Most people have their bonds determined at an initial appearance without an attorney to represent them. This bond review hearing is different than the initial appearance because it includes the participation of the prosecutor and defense counsel, resulting in a more meaningful bond hearing.
2. Timely Hearings for Bond Motions and Violations. Rule 46(h) of the West Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure states bail hearings “shall be held within a reasonable time not later than five days after the filing of the motion.”
3. Regular Review of People Jailed Prior to Trial. The rules of criminal procedure provide process for “eliminating all unnecessary detention.” Rule 46(g) states:
Supervision of detention pending trial. – The court shall exercise supervision over the detention of defendants and witnesses within the county pending trial for the purpose of eliminating all unnecessary detention. The attorney for the state shall make a biweekly report to the court listing each defendant and witness who has been held in custody pending indictment, arraignment or trial for a period in excess of 10 days… As to each defendant so listed, the attorney for the state shall make a statement of the reasons why the defendant is still held in custody.
4. Address Capias Arrests Quickly. Capias arrests account for one in eight jail admissions. Under a 2023 law, when a person is arrested on a capias for failure to appear, the magistrate or judge who issued the capias must hold a hearing within five days of the arrest. The law also created standards for issuing a capias due to failure to appear.
State Lawmakers Must Do Their Part Too
1. Do Less. Each year they introduce hundreds of bills that would create new criminal offenses and sentencing penalties. When a person can be charged multiple ways for the same conduct, they typically are. More charges on a criminal complaint tend to drive higher bonds, which results in more people jailed before trial.
2. Require Bond Review Hearings for All Charges. In 2020, lawmakers passed legislation aimed at reducing the number of people in jail. The law directed a bond review hearing for every person who remained incarcerated regardless of whether they were charged with a misdemeanor or felony. But under pressure from magistrates, the legislature came back the next year and clawed back the bond review hearings for people charged with felonies.
The problem: 80 percent of people jailed pretrial on any day are charged with felony offenses. If felony charges are excluded from bond review hearings, elected officials can expect to get the same results they have been getting.
3. Get Rid of H.B. 3552’s Pro Rata Scheme. This formula was flawed from the beginning. When the state calculated a total number of jail days to assign to counties, the state gave counties more days than the counties had previously used: 932,736 pro rata days compared to 895,000 days used in the year before.
The best policy is also the simplest. The state should charge the true cost of incarceration.
Going to jail is a fundamentally dehumanizing experience. You lose your liberty. You are not allowed to hold your child or a loved one. You have no control of when you eat, when you open a door, or when the lights turn off. You use the bathroom in front of strangers. Your belongings and your body can be searched at any time.
This dehumanization creeps into the community. People in jail are more likely to lose their rights to be a parent. After their release, they are at greater risk of job loss and reduced future earnings, and experiencing homelessness.
Our elected officials may be insulated from these harms, but the West Virginians who spent 901,891 days in jail last year are not.
At the very least, elected officials should face an honest accounting for their policy choices.
Read Sara’s full blog post.
The WVCBP recently released the 17th installment of our State of Working West Virginia series, which examines the Mountain State’s economy through the lens of its workers. This year’s edition focuses on the state of women in and around West Virginia’s workforce. A recent article highlighted some of the main findings included in our report. Excerpt below:
Women’s labor force participation rate in West Virginia has fallen over the past two decades but more are performing unpaid work, mostly as caregivers, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
Working women continue to earn less than men, at just under $20 an hour, compared to just over $23 an hour for men.
Sean O’Leary, senior policy analyst for the center, said just under half of West Virginia women are neither working nor looking for work. Most are performing the unpaid work that is the backbone of families and communities.
“If you at took the low wages that we pay child care workers in the state and apply that to those who aren’t working but taking care of children at home, that’s $1.6 billion of unpaid labor that’s going on right now,” O’Leary reported.
He argued lawmakers could help women by implementing a refundable state child care tax credit and increasing child care subsidies. Both would help boost household income and allow people the flexibility to increase their job prospects. At the current level of cost, infant care for just one child would take nearly 20% of the average West Virginia family’s income.
O’Leary pointed out most women in the workforce still are not making enough to make ends meet. According to the report, 73% of West Virginia elementary school workers are women.
“Women have higher levels of educational attainment than men in the state, elementary and secondary education requires higher levels of education,” O’Leary noted. “But they pay much, much lower wages.”
The median hourly wage for women workers in the Mountain state ranks 45th in the country and translates into lower incomes and less economic security over a lifetime. Just under 26,000 West Virginia women, or 7.5%, are employed but also living in poverty, which is higher than the 5.2% poverty rate for working men.
Read the full article.
Read our full State of Working West Virginia 2024 report.
West Virginia’s jails are dangerously overcrowded. To address this issue, a law was passed in 2020 that sought to reduce the state’s reliance on money bail for misdemeanors. But years later, that policy is still not being implemented as intended. A recent article, including data from the WVCBP, offers further details. Excerpt below:
Changes in bail policy don’t affect crime rates in cities nationwide, according to new data from the Brennan Center for Justice.
Cash bail has driven up jail overcrowding in West Virginia, and the state continues to struggle with record-high staff vacancies within the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Eli Baumwell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, said several years ago the state created a policy aimed at reducing the use of money bail for misdemeanors.
But he said local jurisdictions have been slow to implement.
“It has not really been put into effect, because discretion was baked in,” said Baumwell. “And that was at the request of judicial officers who assured us that they would be making efforts to expand the use of personal recognizance. That hasn’t happened, at least in many jurisdictions.”
The study compared major offenses from 2015 through 2021 in around two dozen cities that had in place some type of bail reform.
Baumwell said the state could implement policies that boost pre-trial services, such as text reminders and child care to help people show up to their court date – instead of holding them in jail for weeks, months or, in some cases, over a year.
Ames Grawert, senior counsel with the Brennan Center, said bail amounts tend to be set higher for people of color.
“Even if someone is able to secure a bail bond – rather than pay the amount of money required by the court outright – those bonds can often come with very high, non-refundable fees,” said Grawert, “and those fees on their own can be fairly devastating to a family living on the edge.”
Baumwell pointed out that the bail system has worsened jail overcrowding in the Mountain State.
“We still have way more more people in these facilities than the jails can hold,” said Baumwell. “We don’t have enough staff to really make sure that they are being properly cared for.”
According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, in the last decade West Virginia jails had the highest death rate in the country – twice the national average.
And, the state continues to struggle with record-high staff vacancies within the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Read the full article.
The WV Criminal Law Reform Coalition is excited to invite you to their 2025 annual convening! The coalition is made up of organizations and people directly impacted who are working to reduce our reliance on incarceration and law enforcement in West Virginia. We work at the community and state levels to influence and enact policy that will break the school-to-prison pipeline, end the overpolicing of communities of color, stop the predatory practice of cash bail, confront the criminalization of poverty, and more.
Led by those with lived experience, this one-of-a-kind, in-person conference will be a shared space to connect and create winning criminal law reforms in West Virginia. The convening will take place January 13-15, 2025 at the John XXIII Retreat Center in Charleston.
You can register for the event here and learn more on the event landing page here.
The Black Voter Impact Initiative and Black by God, the founders of West Virginia’s Black Policy Day, are hosting an exciting webinar series focused on specific aspects of the Black Policy Agenda. This is an excellent opportunity to deepen your knowledge and engage with experts across various issue areas ahead of the 2025 West Virginia legislative session.
You can register for the webinar series here.
You can share what you would like to see prioritized in the Black Policy Agenda by filling out this survey.
Mark your calendars for Black Policy Day 2025, which will take place on March 10, 2025.
The current system of reimbursing child care providers in West Virginia is based on the attendance of the child, not their enrollment. This approach often leaves providers at a financial disadvantage when children are absent due to illness or other reasons.
According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, stable funding based on enrollment rather than attendance can provide more predictable income for providers and support higher quality care. By adopting this approach, we can ensure that our child care providers continue offering their invaluable services without worrying about inconsistent finances.
Please join us in signing this petition and helping us advocate for a fairer reimbursement system for our West Virginia child care providers.
