by Fred Albert
West Virginians have always gone our own way, always prizing local democracy over government bureaucracy. Nowhere is that more evident than with our neighborhood public schools. We want our communities, not Charleston, to have the strongest voice in decision-making for our children’s education.
That’s why it’s shocking to see state lawmakers override our communities’ right to a say how our neighborhood public schools work, through a reckless, destructive charter bill (House Bill 2012) that’s been rammed through the state Legislature and is now on the governor’s desk.
This bill is one of two (the other, HB 2013, is a wide-reaching voucher bill) that together would drain a half-billion a year from our public schools. That’s one-quarter of the total state education budget for our schools for fiscal year 2019-20.
Draining funding from our schools at a time when they need every penny is worrying enough. Equally troubling: The charter bill is a head-on attack on local control of our schools.
HB 2012 goes right around county boards of education to set up a state authorization board for charters. In other words, your elected county school board could consider and deny a charter school application, and this bill would let a new state bureaucracy say, “Nope, we’re putting a charter in your community anyway.”
In Monongalia County, the school board carefully reviewed and denied a charter school application in November 2020. If you live in Mon County and think that was the wrong decision, you have choices. You can democratically vote in new board members. You can organize community support to convince the board to change its mind. You can even run for school board yourself. But if
HB 2012 passes, decisions on charter schools in your county will be made by a state board that doesn’t know your community like you do and doesn’t answer to voters.
Anyone accountable to voters would look at the research, which shows that West Virginians aren’t up for major privatization experiments with our kids’ education. In an August 2019 West Virginia poll, voters preferred, by a margin of almost two to one, to improve the existing public school system rather than opt for an alternative like charter schools.
Likewise, for West Virginia’s Voice, a 2019 report about public education for which the state Department of Education captured public input from more than 20,000 West Virginians, 88% of participants in Voice-hosted public forums opposed public charter schools. Instead, these parents, students and community members wanted investment in proven strategies to help our schools, such as redesigning schools to embed social services, increasing student support personnel and giving teachers more resources to help them address the needs of students experiencing trauma.
The pandemic has left so many children experiencing higher rates of stress and trauma. We’re betting most parents don’t think their child’s school should be losing money and resources right now. A drastic charter expansion like this one, piled on top of a new state voucher program, would leave our schools struggling to do more than ever, with less than ever.
But to be clear, you could even be an ardent charter supporter and still oppose this bill on principle — because when the state decides to interfere in decisions like these, it’s a blow to local democracy. Having the state say how much your child’s school should suffer for a charter that the state itself plops down in your midst is like having the state decide to build a highway in your backyard to ease local traffic jams and tear down your house to make it happen.
We don’t need education by eminent domain in West Virginia. Our schools belong to us, not to politicians in Charleston. HB 2012 is an undemocratic power grab that Gov. Jim Justice should veto.
Fred Albert is the president of AFT-West Virginia, which represents over 10,000 teachers and school employees across the state, as well as public employees and employees in universities, colleges and community/junior colleges.
