CHARLESTON – Changes made to a House of Delegates school aid formula bill by the Senate Finance Committee Thursday takes out much of the House’s proposed block grant program but puts added emphasis on special education funding for county school systems and charter schools.

The Senate Finance Committee amended and recommended House Bill 5453 for passage to the full Senate Thursday afternoon. Like their counterparts in the House of Delegates, senators spent the day working through an extensive floor session as the session winds down to adjournment at midnight Saturday.

“There’s a lot of pressure to reform this school aid formula somehow,” said Senate Majority Whip Ben Queen, R-Harrison. “Hopefully we can get this across the finish line.”

HB 5453, as amended earlier this week by the Senate Education Committee, would have shifted county school systems from the current seven-step state school aid formula to a new block grant model beginning with the 2029-30 school year, setting the base allotment at $6,100 per student.

The Senate Education Committee’s version would have funded county school systems with fewer than 1,200 students at a minimum threshold of 1,200 students and increased the per-pupil funding for public charter schools to $8,600 beginning with the 2029-30 school year.

HB 5453 also created the Supplemental School Aid Fund, into which the Legislature would appropriate funds based on specific student needs and district requests beginning in fiscal year 2028. The fund would establish a per-student allotment based on the classification of special needs students, with schools being funded $4,050 per pupil for tier two students and $6,100 per pupil for tier three.

But the Senate Finance Committee’s strike-and-insert amendment to HB 5453 wipes out the proposed block grant funding model in its entirety. Instead of a flat supplemental fund, the amendment integrates special education needs directly into the net enrollment calculation used for the basic foundation program.

Under the proposed amendment, level two special needs students would count as 1.2 students in the current school aid funding formula, and level three special needs students would count as 1.3 students beginning in the 2027-28 school year. The proposed special education formula would provide $7.8 million for county school systems.

A further amendment was made to clarify that the bill would apply to public charter schools that also receive state school aid formula funding.

“Would it be out of order to have the charter school tier two and tier three kids in this bill?” asked state Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia. “Would you envision … those dollars being able to flow down to the public charter schools?”

“Absolutely. I don’t see a problem with that at all,” said Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Amy Grady, R-Mason. “They weren’t left out on purpose. … It wasn’t something that was thought about prior.”

“It would be no issue at all to pick up the charter school students,” said Uriah Cummings, school finance operations officer for the Department of Education. “We would just have to start collecting data from those schools regarding special education students and lump them into a tier one, two or three similar to how we are currently treating the county boards of education. So, we would just need to add an additional step into our data collection process.”

Cummings also said that including special needs public charter school students would likely not substantially increase the $7.8 million price tag for fiscal year 2028. But the funding formula would not benefit county school systems and charter schools for the upcoming fiscal year beginning on July 1.

County school systems are already spending approximately $200 million above what the state and federal government are providing to cover the costs of special education students, according to the Department of Education.

Another approved amendment would expire two subsections of state code dating back to 1990 that dictated instructional personnel ratios. The amendment repealed a rule that required 91% of professional staff to be instructional personnel. It also struck limitations on hiring additional administrators beyond levels put in place in 1990.