If alternative K-12 education is the new frontier, then West Virginia is the Wild West.
In early March, “The 74” broke the story of The Hive Learning Academy — a microschool in Martinsburg that opened its doors in August and had closed them by November, leaving students and families floundering.
We won’t paint The Hive’s founders as financial predators or villains; it seems the two moms had their hearts in the right place, but they had neither a solid business plan nor the cash flow to get their microschool off the ground and keep it running. They had banked on participants paying tuition — $2,000 to over $4,000 — upfront, many of them using Hope Scholarship funds to do so. Thirty families registered, according to The 74, but when the microschool opened its doors, only eight kids showed up.
Even after ponying up much of their own cash, The Hive’s founders had to start working extra jobs to make enough money to keep lights on in the rented building. But without the founders actively managing the school, The Hive turned into a de facto daycare center where kids hung out, played on their phones and fed themselves from the communal fridge (or didn’t, as was the case with one little boy who wasn’t comfortable taking food from someone else’s fridge), without a set schedule or curriculum.
Unsurprisingly, when parents figured out they weren’t getting what they paid for, many pulled their kids and demanded the Hope Scholarship funds they had paid up front be returned. Those requests prompted a West Virginia Treasurer’s Office investigation into The Hive, and the microschool was ordered to return roughly $15,000 in Hope dollars. (Families didn’t receive refunds for the days their kids attended The Hive.)
Families, of course, were left to figure out where to send their kids next. We don’t know where any of these kids ended up — in another microschool, homeschooled, or at a private or public school — but we imagine it was difficult to find placement not only mid-year, but also after months of very little educational instruction that likely put students behind their peers.
This is why we say West Virginia is the Wild West of alternative education: As summarized by The 74, “The state doesn’t ask potential vendors to submit a business or education plan up front. Anyone who wants to be an authorized Hope ‘service provider,’ including a microschool, must sign a contract agreeing to get criminal background checks on staff working with students and to notify districts when they enroll. To receive funds, vendors need only submit a W-9, a tax form for an independent contractor, and document the Hope funds they receive from parents.”
No business plan, no startup cash, no education plan … That’s an incredibly low bar for people and organizations who want taxpayer dollars. And other states have already seen how the lack of guardrails leads to fraud and abuse: Three women in Arizona were indicted for fraud after spending $87,000 in state education savings account funds on personal purchases and services.
If West Virginia lawmakers are going to insist on allowing ESAs like the Hope Scholarship to be used for privately owned “schools,” then lawmakers must put higher standards and better oversight in place to protect parents and students. Otherwise, we’ll see more financial and educational catastrophes like The Hive.
