photo by: W.Va. Legislative Photography

Senate Health and Human Resources Committee Chairwoman Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio, said House Bill 2880 was a comprehensive child welfare bill. Provisions of a Senate bill relating to licensure of camps for troubled youth were amended into the bill.

CHARLESTON — The countdown to the end of the 2025 session at midnight Saturday is on, with the Senate passing bills dealing with education rule-making and child welfare, with efforts to add provisions weakening school-age immunization into other legislation stripped out.

The Senate passed 21 House bills by early Thursday evening, with another 35 on second reading and amendment stage. Bills have until midnight Saturday to complete the legislative process.

One piece of legislation passed Thursday was House Bill 2755, providing that the West Virginia Board of Education may promulgate rules or policies to be submitted to the Legislature for review. The bill passed the Senate in a 19-15 vote and heads back to the House for concurrence with changes made by the Senate.

HB 2755 was amended to include provisions of Senate Bill 705. It would require that all legislative rules enacted by the board must first be authorized by the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability. The proposed rules would then be submitted to the full Legislature for review, which could result in approval, amendment or rejection.

A 1988 decision in West Virginia Board of Education v. Heckler, the state Supreme Court of Appeals determined that a 1983 law requiring legislative approval of state board rules was unconstitutional. In 2022, voters rejected a constitutional amendment clarifying that “the policy-making and rule-making authority of the state Board of Education is subject to legislative review, approval, amendment, or rejection.”

“The voters rejected the direction this bill takes us. They did so fairly recently,” said Senate Minority Leader Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell. “…This has fundamental constitutional problems that have been pointed out previously. It will be challenged, and I just feel like this is an overreach where it’s not needed.”

The Senate passed House Bill 2880, relating to parent resource navigators, in a 33-1 vote Thursday after adopting a strike-and-insert amendment offered by the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee, sending the bill back to the House.

HB 2880 would include a parent resource coordinator among the list of officials that could be included on a multidisciplinary treatment team to assess, plan and implement a comprehensive, individualized service plan for children who are victims of abuse or neglect and their families.

The amendment inserts provisions from Senate Bill 817, related to the licensure of residential, wilderness, outdoor programs, boot camp, military programs or an education or therapeutic boarding school.

The amended bill requires annual licensure; background checks of staff; prohibitions against the use of physical violence or threat of physical violence to gain compliance; and prohibitions against sexually abusing, exploiting or harassing an enrolled youth. It requires unsupervised calls between the youth and their parents.

One member of the Senate accused Chapman of not clearly explaining that the amendment to HB 2880 included the provisions of SB 817.

“Senator, it would be more helpful in the future if that could be stated first, that when we’re going to move one bill into another bill, it would be helpful that we know that,” state Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia said.

Attempts to amend other legislation watering down the state’s immunization laws were unsuccessful.

House Bill 2402, to provide a parent/guardian, foster parent or kinship placement access to their minor child’s medical records., passed the Senate in a 32-2 vote. But a Senate Health Committee amendment that would have prohibited a person or entity from requiring a parent or guardian to furnish medical records relating to the immunization status of a minor or person enrolled or enrolling in school was pulled, as was Chapman’s own amendment to do the same.

The Senate Health Committee also pulled its amendment to House Bill 2776 Monday afternoon, requiring the state Department of Health to report positive alpha-gal tests — a kind of food allergy caused by tick bites — to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The bill passed the Senate in a 32-0 vote.

The committee amendment would have allowed for a religious exemption to the state’s mandatory school-age immunization program via an annual notarized written statement to the school or child care center on a form created by the Department of Health. A similar bill died in the House on March 24 in a 42-56 vote.

The inclusion of the religious vaccine exemption in HB 2776 was questioned in committee earlier this week due concerns that it violated Article VI, Section 30, of the state constitution, which states that “no act hereafter passed shall embrace more than one object.”