Brooke OKs temporary Hope policy
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WELLSBURG -- Members of the Brooke County Board of Education are taking steps to make sure they have a fee schedule in place for students who receive the state’s Hope Scholarship and who want to enroll in specific classes or activities in the district.
“This is something that the state Legislature has come up with, and they are making us do this,” Superintendent Jeffrey Crook explained during Monday’s board meeting.
“There always are two key words -- one is may and one is shall,” he added. “With may, you have some wiggle room. With shall you do not. In the law, it says the district shall charge people receiving a Hope Scholarship for classes they want to take; for athletics they want to participate in; and for extracurriculars, like to play in the band or participate in a club. We have to charge them for that amount.”
West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship is an education savings account program that allows public education funds to follow eligible K-12 students to private schools, homeschooling or other customized learning environments.
Created by the state Legislature in 2021, the program went into effect at the beginning of 2023 after a legal battle that included a ruling in its favor from the state Supreme Court of Appeals.
Crook said he is still researching how other districts in the state are approaching the issue, and added he expected to have a plan ready to present to the board at its next meeting. In the meantime, the board passed a temporary plan that will see the district charge a Hope Scholarship student’s account one-eighth of the cost for a high school class and one-seventh for a middle school class.
Those percentages take into account that there are eight periods in a day at the high school and seven periods in a day at the middle school.
Extracurricular activities would be billed at $500 per club and $500 per sport per season.
The temporary plan will allow district officials to provide a number to any parent who is looking to enroll his or her child into a class or activity before the permanent procedures are put into place.
“I know that public schools always get blamed for some of this stuff, but this is from the state Legislature, and we have to do it,” Crook said during the meeting. “If people who are getting the Hope Scholarship have an issue with this, they need to call their local legislators, because they are the ones who passed the law. This is not only in Brooke County schools -- this is in every other school district in the state.”
Crook said he will continue to work with the policy service firm NEOLA to develop a permanent plan.
He added discussions have been started to determine how money would be transferred from the Hope accounts to the district.
State officials have told the school districts what they have to do, Crook said, but have offered little guidance about how the districts are supposed to implement the requirements of the law, which is included in Section 18-31-8 of the state code.
In other business, board President Antoinette Perkins said it was exciting to know that the new school year had started.
Crook said things were going very smoothly, and that was mainly because of the efforts of the principals and directors whose work ensured everything was in place.
The board’s next meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 10 at the board’s offices.