West Virginia Special Session Ends with Education Funding Bills (WV)
July 22, 2010
West Virginia will allow one of its lowest-performing schools to partner with community groups under one of several education-related measures that emerged from Wednesday’s conclusion to the weeklong special legislative session.
Lawmakers also voted to approve a separate pilot program meant to divert and then reach out to disruptive elementary and middle school students. Up to five schools statewide would experiment with alternative settings for these students.
But the House and Senate continued to disagree over other education measures, leaving four unresolved. They also trimmed a pair of supplemental funding measures. Among other changes, they removed funding to the Capitol’s new food court and deleted a proposed transfer of $8 million for a new high-risk insurance pool.
The community development pilot would last five years, with a school on Charleston’s West Side a likely candidate, said Sen. Erik Wells, D-Kanawha. That bill would also allow a two-year test of as-yet-unspecified pay boosts for educators in an array of settings. Those include low-performing, high-poverty or high-minority schools, subject areas critically short of teachers and schools with "career ladder" systems that aim to reward educators who take on additional duties and aid student growth.& lt;/p> That and six other bills on the session’s agenda were revised from measures that failed to advance during a May special session focused on education. Despite efforts by a House-Senate working group to fashion compromises in the interim, several other of these items died or were scaled back this week.
The House Education Committee voted down a sweeping revamping of the state’s response to low-performing schools. It idled another measure that proposed alternative ways to certify teachers and principals.
That committee also reduced a bid for frequent student health screenings by medical professionals to a recommendation. Noting that the measure lacked teeth when introduced, Delegate Woody Ireland said the committee took "a ridiculous bill and make it worthless."
"Anybody that would be against child health improvement would be less than intelligent," said Ireland, R-Ritchie and a committee member. "What I am against is a feel-good bill for us or some member of the executive that does absolutely zero toward improving our children’s health."
State policy as changed by the bill would only require hearing, vision and speech testing of students by school personnel, and only when they first enter the school system. The measure died after the Senate refused to accept the House’s version Wednesday. A separate amended measure addressing annual educator evaluations similarly failed.
Of other bills passed to the governor Wednesday, one would help fund the fall U.S. Senate special election that was the session’s centerpiece. It also provides $1 million for the disruptive student pilot projects.
Another would allow continued independent investing by the nonprofit foundations for Marshall and West Virginia universities. Others would allow the state’s circuit courts to continue to handle appeals from the new system of family courts, and expand the pilot program meant to ease military and overseas absentee voting.
The funding measures would add around $20 million to the ongoing state budget. The transfer removed by the House would have funded a new program created by the federal health care overhaul. GOP delegates opposed to that new law had targeted the funding over concerns it might pay for abortion services. The program is for West Virginians with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months.
The bulk of the approved funding is federal dollars for state environmental programs. Other beneficiaries include the attorney general’s appeals division, and the stepped-up testing of coal dust levels in mines spurred by April’s disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine.