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MORGANTOWN – Six hundred ninety-one individual students in Monongalia County received funds last school year from the Hope Scholarship program, according to the program’s 2025-26 Annual Report, published last week.
The Hope Scholarship is an educational savings account program for families with children aged K-12 where taxpayer dollars can be used to pay for non-public educational services, such as online classes, tutoring programs, behavioral therapies or travel. Eligible participants include all West Virginia residents who were either enrolled full-time in a public elementary or secondary school program for the entire preceding academic year; enrolled full-time and attended a public elementary or secondary school program in the state for at least 45 consecutive calendar days during an instructional term at the time of application or eligible to be enrolled in kindergarten for the 2025-26 school year, the report explained.
The Hope Scholarship Act was passed in West Virginia’s 2021 Legislative session via House Bill 2013 and was amended in the 2024 Legislative Session through HB 4945, in which Hope Scholarship students were now specifically granted authority to receive a high school diploma, the PROMISE Scholarship and a work permit/Advanced Career Education program.
HB 5686 specified a quarterly payment schedule in the 2026 Legislative session. A full legislative history of the Hope Scholarship Program can be found in W.Va. Code §18-31-6.
The average award amount per student was $5,267.38 across the state, a 7.03% increase from the previous year.
Eight Morgantown nonpublic schools received payments, including St. Francis Central Catholic School at 41 Guthrie Lane, which was awarded $1.09 million. The school did not respond to request for comment in time for this report.
The W.Va. Department of Education announced a public school enrollment decline of over 8,270 students for the 2026-27 Academic Year, a 3.52% decline and the lowest in over 20 years, according to a Oct. 27 press release.
Shawn Smith, President of the Mon County Board of Education, said that Mon County schools have experienced a steady decline of enrollment since 2019 with the loss of 6% or 682 kids in the last seven years.
Smith was concerned about the amount of taxpayer money spent on payments outside of West Virginia when there are high quality services within. According to the report, citizens spent $2.6 million on nonpublic schools and $1.7 million on education providers outside the state's borders.
"Legislators will say, 'Well, Mon County buys stuff out-of-state.' Yeah, for programs that do not exist," he said. "Someone spent $13,000 on 'Liz's Piano Lessons' in Charlotte, North Carolina. Someone spent $25,000 on a reading center in Iowa. We have reading centers. We have piano lessons in West Virginia."
Smith said he wishes more "guardrails" were put up on spending, and that the state put more emphasis on allocating funding to students living in poverty or with disabilities. He urges private schools that receive the Hope scholarship be held to the same standards as public schools.
"There's a private school in southern West Virginia that received half a million dollars in Hope Scholarship money, and their admissions page says that they don't accept kids that need physical assistance because they don't have those resources," Smith said. "So, where do those kids go? They go to public school. If you're going to receive state tax money, wouldn't it be fair for you to be held to the same code and the same standard as a public school?"
While Smith said he sees "both sides" when deciding if public or private education is right for students, he advocates for Mon County's "world class" public school system.
"I'm a huge public school fan. I support it. I was born and raised in them. My whole family was, and my girls are in public school," he said. "I'm a fan of all the opportunities and extracurriculars we have. No one can compete with public schools when it comes to our STEM programs, our athletics, our academics and our extracurricular activities."
According to the report, there are over 25,000 approved applicants for the 2026-27 AY, nearly double the 14,486 participants in the previous year. While he finds the numbers alarming, Smith said he will continue to advocate for continued public school enrollment.
"We can't control everything, we're not going to be able to. I'm going to stand up for our public schools and our kids who are in need 100% of the time. I'm not competing on price. I'm just going to sell the excellence that we are as a public school system. I'm not going to compete and fight because we're going to sell the excellence that we have. The programs we provide, the administration we have and the teachers we have are second to none."