The Hope Scholarship Program, the school choice initiative that the state Supreme Court affirmed, offers families $4,300 a year in state money for each child they move out of public school and into private education or homeschooling. Union representatives cite a slew of “retaliatory” laws passed since they went on strike that they say have harmed teachers and drained resources from traditional public schools, including a law barring public employees from striking and the push for charter schools. This past legislative session, he said, lawmakers spent weeks on a bill that would restrict how public educators teach students about race, but refused to take up proposals to end inequities between white and Black students around school discipline, with Black students more likely to be punished. He said his colleagues prefer to take up “social issues that don’t move the agenda just for political posturing.” “Why would we hand over everything to the Legislature when we haven’t been doing our job to begin with?” he said. Sean Hornbuckle, one of the few Black lawmakers in West Virginia and a member of the House Education Committee, said Republicans have no business taking over public schools when they've consistently failed to help them. “They don’t like you to question what they’re doing.”īut Democratic Del. “What you find is people don’t like accountability,” she said. Republican House Majority Leader Amy Summers said lawmakers want to give parents a greater voice in their children's education. West Virginia's governor-appointed and senate-confirmed state school board members serve nine-year terms - the longest in any U.S. GOP lawmakers say people making decisions about schools should be accountable to voters. The only agency exempt is the Department of Education. “When you hear politicians start out the discussion with ’Trust me,' you know you’re in trouble," said Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association.īy law, all government agencies in West Virginia are required to submit new rules and regulations each year to lawmakers for final approval. Dale Lee, the head of the state's largest public educators' union, said educators feel “disrespected" and called the proposed amendment “just another way of our politicians trying to erode our public schools with their own private agenda.” Teachers say some of the problems that drew them to the picket lines in 20 - high teacher vacancy rates, falling test scores, lack of mental health support - worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now lawmakers are trying to assert more control. Four years after more than 30,000 school workers went on strike in one of the nation's poorest states, igniting teacher walkouts nationwide, many say they're overworked and exhausted. And in a state that once was a stronghold of organized labor, some see the proposed amendment as part of an effort to defang the most formidable center of union power left standing: public school employees.
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