Accelerating through the West Virginia Senate is a controversial bill, SB 451, that ties a modest 5% average teacher wage increase and PEIA health insurance funding to sweeping measures that
(1) authorize publicly-funded, less-regulated charter schools,
(2) create a voucher system through education savings accounts,
(3) enlarge class sizes in elementary schools,
(4) dock teacher pay during walkouts, and
(5) require unions to get permission to deduct dues from teacher paychecks, among other provisions.
The first two measures will not address the state’s most pressing educational needs, and the last three will almost certainly aggravate the teaching conditions and disrespect that led teachers to strike a year ago.
Despite threats of more walkouts and a veto threat by the governor, this 137-page omnibus bill has been expedited through the Senate at breakneck pace—on a straight-party vote through the Education Committee a day after it was introduced and then bypassing the Finance Committee through a parliamentary procedure last used in 1961.
As if the proposed overhaul to the education system were not provocative enough, lawmakers raised the stakes in this bill by including a non-severability clause so that if any provision of the bill is deemed unlawful by a court, the entire legislation would be rendered invalid.
Charter schools and vouchers—previously foreign to West Virginia—would indeed be susceptible to legal challenges like those that have been brought in other states against their implementation.
As education law scholar Derek Black persuasively argues, there are constitutional limitations on charter schools and vouchers: A state cannot systematically advantage school choice programs over its traditional public education system. Nor can a state implement choice programs in a way that deprives any child of his or her right to an adequate and equitable education under the state constitution.
Although the school choice components of the bill have, for good reason, captured most of the headlines, charters and vouchers are diversions, both as a matter of short-term legislative strategy and long-term K-12 education policy. The more immediate threat to public education is posed by what this bill does and does not do in terms of school funding.
First, what SB 451 does is put the burden of raising additional funds to improve public schools squarely on county school districts rather than the state. This move is accomplished by (1) raising limits on levy tax rates and by (2) authorizing boards of education to increase levy taxes without voter approval.
Briefly, this is how it currently works:
The state requires each school district to levy property taxes to generate enough revenue to fund a minimum education in that county. This minimum is called the “foundation allowance” and it is based on the district’s resource costs (e.g., teacher salaries, curricular materials, transportation), largely driven by student enrollment. When the county “local share” is insufficient, that is, when its property taxes do not yield the required foundation allowance, state basic aid makes up the difference. There is considerable variation in state basic aid to districts. For the 2018-19 school year, the state contributed 89% of Clay County’s foundation allowance, but 0% of Doddridge County’s allowance.
The expectation implicit in SB 451 is that school districts can and should tax themselves more. Ordinarily, an increase in the local share would, in turn, reduce the state’s contribution, except that SB451 locks in the 2015-16 school year local share levels. So, going forward, if the county raises more in taxes than it did in 2015-16, the state basic aid would still be calculated as the difference between the foundation allowance and the county’s 2015-16 local share. So then, what’s the problem?
The state’s basic aid contribution will eventually drop due to declining enrollment and increasing local property tax revenues. State aid has already declined by more than $55 million just since the 2015-16 school year. To put the state’s overall contribution into further context, the amount of money “appropriated for public education as a percentage of total state appropriations have decreased from more than 56 percent in 1993 to just over 43 percent in 2018.”
Over the long run, SB451 also virtually guarantees that the political costs of raising taxes will be borne entirely by boards of education. State lawmakers meanwhile can excuse their failure to provide additional state aid beyond the 2015-16 levels because counties will have the theoretical (if politically infeasible) authority to tax themselves at higher rates.
There is already some question as to whether state basic aid formula is effectively compensating counties for actual costs driven by the percentage of special-needs students, regional costs of living, and other fixed costs. And who is to say that the 2015-16 levels are adequate?
This bill quite simply leaves out nearly everything that matters to a quality education in West Virginia. It does not prompt any evaluation of whether the foundational allowance for each county is constitutionally adequate. Instead, it just assumes that the state has been doing it right all along and will continue to do so with inflation increases and enrollment adjustments.
And given that SB451 does not provide additional per pupil funding for low-income, gifted, or at-risk students, nor fully reimburse school districts for the costs of education students with disabilities or other special needs, that’s a huge assumption to make.
The prospect that charter schools and vouchers could siphon public school funding would only compound these uncertainties and exacerbate preexisting disparities.
As Professor Black observes, these disparities are harshly felt at the local school district level. Neighboring school districts in Ohio, for instance, have had to transfer more of their funds to charter schools than they actually receive in per-pupil funding from the state. States sometimes overcompensate charter schools for the services they provide, as has happened in nearby Pennsylvania.
WVDE is indeed projecting that “funding for charter schools will reduce the amount of funding available for existing public schools.” That’s because SB451 requires counties to send “90% of both their local share…and their state aid funding to the charter school, which reduces the amount of funding available to operate existing public school programs.”
So, yes, we should be concerned about the rushed introduction of the school choice programs in West Virginia with SB 451, particularly when there is mounting evidence that charters and vouchers do not outperform traditional public schools in terms of better educational outcomes or reducing achievement gaps.
But do not overlook the political sleight of hand that is being accomplished through this bill that does little to improve school funding to guarantee a constitutionally adequate and equitable education for all West Virginia children—not just a select few, who through lottery or their parent’s wealth, can attend their school of choice.