West Virigina Education Panel Backtracks on Funding Cap

December 15, 2009

The state school board’s Regional Education Service Agency Committee talked earlier this week about asking the Legislature to remove the funding cap placed on RESAs six years ago.

Now the board is just hoping to keep the existing spending model in place.

At Wednesday’s meeting, board members unanimously voted to remove a request to lift the cap from their annual legislative agenda. The amended legislative wish-list – what they’re asking lawmakers to consider when the session starts in January – is expected to be approved by the board today.

"We are very much into protecting the funding of RESAs as it currently is," state board member and RESA committee chairman Lowell Johnson said. "We don’t know what the Legislature’s going to do, and nobody really does."

The Legislature capped funding for RESAs at $4.2 million. That money is distributed through a 60/40 formula, where 60 percent of that money is distributed evenly to agencies and the remaining 40 percent is given out according to population.

Johnson says whenever entities request more money from the Legislature, they’re asked to justify that increase. To justify removing the cap, and probably giving the agencies another million dollars, he says the RESAs will probably take a year to show what kind of services are no longer available to counties since the cap was imposed and how many workers were laid off.

Board member Wade Linger suggested the agencies move to a self-sustaining model, where they’re free to seek outside money, charge fees for their services and "make it on their own."

He said moving to a business model would get the board "out of this mode where we’re constantly looking at this block of money, and (RESAs) tell us what they can’t do because we didn’t give them enough money."

Linger said the agencies would grow or shrink depending on how well they operate, just like other businesses.

"The ones that aren’t deserving or don’t do as well, they’ll go away," he said.

Johnson suggested Linger sit in on the next RESA committee meeting to share those sentiments.

Among the board’s other suggestions for lawmakers: offering teachers more pay in areas where teaching jobs are difficult to fill.

"It just gives us a chance to pay people more money if we can to get them to come to schools where they really need," deputy superintendent Jack McClanahan said.

The board also is re questing a change to West Virginia code allowing non-citizens to obtain teaching certificates.

The proposal didn’t go anywhere last year because some legislators feared the provision might allow illegal immigrants to get teaching jobs in West Virginia. This year’s proposal requires a green card or an applicants’ declaration to become a U.S. citizen.

Some board members were at odds over a legislative request to allow "alternative principal certification." Passing the legislation would allow school districts to set up programs with higher education institutions for people with master’s degrees to take courses to become principals.

State School Superintendent Steve Paine said, in his research, he’s never found anything saying an alternative certification program is effective or not effective.

"If we would do something like this, it would have to be carefully constructed," Paine said.

Assistant Superintendent Karen Huffman said the alternative certification might help West Virginia get Race to the Top Funding from the U.S. Department of Education.

That’s the $5 billion pot of money set aside from the federal stimulus bill to help state and local school systems with education projects.

Jim Phares, superintendent of Randolph County Schools, told board members he didn’t like the idea of alternative certification.

"I’m a Neanderthal on that. I worked my way up through the ranks," he said.

Board president Priscilla Haden also expressed doubts.

"I’m very wary of the possibility of that," she said. "I don’t think a couple points and a couple dollars are worth doing that right now."

Ultimately, the board voted to keep the alternative certification in their agenda, without Haden’s vote.