I think most of the state was shocked to see the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals issued an order last week reinstating the Hope Scholarship program two days after hearing oral arguments.

Sure, the state Supreme Court agreed to expedite the case considering that more than 3,000 families were in limbo after Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Joanna Tabit granted a permanent injunction for the state’s new educational savings account/voucher program.

The Hope Scholarship program lets eligible families use $4,300 per child of tax dollars set aside from the state student aid formula for specific education expenses – anything from tutoring, supplemental educational resources, and even private/religious school tuition.

The program is limited to students already in the public education system for at least 45 days or more, but the program opens up to all children of West Virginia residents by 2026 and could take away funding that would otherwise go to public schools and cost the state more than $100 million if all eligible families participate.

I understand that some private schools and religious schools had prorated tuition for Hope Scholarship families with the hope, pun unintended, that the Supreme Court would dissolve the injunction and the program could start sending out the scholarship funding.

We don’t know why the Supreme Court ruled the way it did.

A majority opinion has not been released and no dissents have been published. I will be very curious to see how the majority of justices come down on the state constitutional issues.

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Speaking of education, the libertarian Reason Foundation had some interesting stats in its annual K-12 Education Spending Spotlight released in August.

In West Virginia, there was a 15% increase in total revenue (federal, state, and local) per pupil over 18 years adjusted for inflation. Per-pupil revenue between 2002 and 2020 increased from $12,350 per pupil to $14,163 per pupil. Enrollment during the same timeframe decreased by 6.6%, from 282,245 to 263,486.

Costs keep going up while the number of students served keeps going down. As of the most recent end-of-year enrollment numbers for Spring 2021, numbers dropped to 249,375. We’ll see if the new brick-and-mortar charters, statewide virtual charters, and Hope Scholarship families choosing private or religious schools add to this decline, but the decline has been going on for a while.

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As a reporter, I find sometimes people try to figure out where I stand on issues based on how I write a news story. I certainly have personal opinions as someone who lives in West Virginia, owns property here, pays taxes here, etc. Objectivity is impossible, but it is always the goal I aim for.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit I don’t have an opinion specifically on the Hope Scholarship.

I have no issues with school choice, and I don’t take issue with the idea that parents should be able to use the portion of taxes they pay and use those dollars for whatever educational option they deem best.

But I feel the same way about Hope as I do about public charter schools: neither are silver bullets for solving this state’s educational attainment issues.

It’s a fact that students in this state lag behind other states when it comes to math and English/language arts. It was true before the learning loss attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic school shutdowns, and scores are rebounding since 2020 and 2021, but they are rebounding to levels that were unacceptable pre-COVID.

We have high graduation numbers, but those graduates are going right into college remedial programs. The ones who don’t go to college are going out into the world unprepared. I’ve written about this issue before, but as a state, we really undervalue education.

I suspect the parents putting their children in the handful of public charter schools or signing up for the Hope Scholarship care very much about their children’s education. I think it is safe to say that the parents who homeschool or pay for private and religious school education care.

But what are we, as a society, going to do to help the students who decide to remain in public schools who don’t have the support system at home that encourages them to do better in school?

It looks like both the state Board of Education under President Paul Hardesty and the state Senate with new Senate Education Committee Chair (and public school teacher) Amy Grady are going to focus on public education and helping teachers versus being hostile. House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, had a one-year head start with bills he supported providing more aides for teachers and requiring students be proficient before leaving third grade.

If lawmakers can steer some of the more reactionary members away from some of the hot button issues popular on the nat-con right, they might make some progress in 2023.