Kyneddi Miller, 14, was found in April in an “emaciated state” in her grandparents’ home in Boone County. (Courtesy of WCHS-TV)
In Boone County, Del. Josh Holstein said the death of 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller still weighed heavily on his community.
Law enforcement discovered the girl’s body in a “skeletal state” on the bathroom floor of her Boone County home in April. A criminal complaint said she hadn’t eaten for months.
“People just can’t believe that it was allowed to happen — that there wasn’t a check up on this child,” said Holstein, R-Boone.
West Virginia Watch learned that Kyneddi was pulled from public school in 2021 to be homeschooled by her mother, who was indicted — alongside two grandparents — on Tuesday for murder in connection with the girl’s death. None of the required documentation tracking Kyneddi’s school progress was ever submitted to the local school board.
Justice and other state lawmakers earlier this year said that the Legislature should promptly examine tightening the state’s homeschool reporting regulations in order to prevent future tragedies. At one point, Justice said he might call a special session focused on the issue. But as the governor has planned a special session for this month, the issue hasn’t yet been brought up.
A spokesperson for Justice did not respond to questions for this story.
“Something obviously has to change. You can’t keep letting this happen,” Holstein said.
State education data released after Kyneddi’s death showed that 57% of the homeschooled students submitted the required documentation by deadline. The number dropped to 37% for students presumed to be in 11th grade.
Holstein would like to see lawmakers have a chance during the special session to again vote on a bill known as Raylee’s Law, which in its latest version would pause or potentially deny a parent’s request to homeschool if a teacher has reported suspected child abuse. The House of Delegates approved the amendment in February; it failed to be taken up in the Senate.
Holstein stressed that it wasn’t a homeschooling regulations bill, but rather, it focused on improving child welfare. “I think that’s a good step … we need to sign it into law,” he said.
While the legislation may not have helped in Kyneddi’s case, amendment sponsor Del. Sean Fluharty, D-Ohio, stressed that the current homeschool laws permitted a loophole for children to be removed from school to hide abuse and neglect. The legislation is named for Raylee Browning, an eight-year-old girl who died of abuse and neglect in 2018 in Fayette County after her parents withdrew her from school.
“The risk remains the same: we will see more headlines of our laws being taken advantage of by people who have ill intent. The first thing an abuser wants to do is hide children from a mandatory reporting requirement,” Fluharty said.
Jim McKay, state coordinator for Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia, supported Raylee’s Law.
“There needs to be a balance between parents making decisions about their children’s education and having common-sense protections to ensure that children are not pulled out of school to impede an investigation for their safety,” he said.
Fluharty was doubtful that Justice would include the bill on his special session call, which hasn’t been released. The session, so far, is likely to focus on the governor’s plans for a state income tax cut and child care tax credit.
“As more and more reports come out that show the Legislature has failed to act, all we get in response to that is a bunch of press conferences saying we’re going to work on it,” Fluharty said.
Schools face challenges following up on missing homeschool students
West Virginia Republicans have rolled back homeschooling reporting requirements, doing away in 2016 with the requirement that parents submit assessments yearly.
Now, homeschool parents are required to submit assessments in grades 3, 5, 8 and 11 to their county school board as one of their options for maintaining contact with the local school district.
More than 30,000 children are homeschooled in West Virginia. State law doesn’t require that public school employees follow up on homeschool families who have failed to report a child’s progress.
State Schools Superintendent Michele Blatt in June suggested that lawmakers mandate that public schools’ attendance directors follow up with homeschool families who haven’t turned in the assessments. She also noted that attendance directors are often required to not only track public school students but keep up with homeschool and charter school students’ whereabouts, as well.
“I don’t think that we have a structure out there in our families right now in West Virginia that we want to take a chance that we would lose additional children in the system,” Blatt said earlier this year.
There have been cases where homeschool assessments were wrongfully reported as missing. The Hope Scholarship, the state’s education savings account program that gives roughly $4,400 per student for homeschooling, requires the assessments for eligibility.
Jared Hunt, spokesperson for the Treasurer’s Office, said that in the past sometimes schools weren’t aware a student was participating in the Hope program and didn’t forward on the assessment. Other times, a parent may have failed to turn in the correct paperwork to the school district about their intent to use Hope Scholarship.
“Overall, we’ve worked through those issues, and moving forward, we’re trying to figure out a better system to prevent that,” he said, adding that the program had a high compliance rate of families turning in the required assessments.
Other potential legislation prompted by Kyneddi’s death
Holstein said he’d like to work with law enforcement and the Department of Human Services to work on legislation that could give officers the authority to check in on children who are missing from check-ins, like homeschool reporting requirements.
“We’re not in urban centers in this state. We’re spread out in hollers and hills and everywhere. It’s kind of hard to maintain a good grasp on how children are doing,” he said.
Homeschool advocates in the Legislature have pushed back on altering any laws, saying that homeschooling was being blamed for Kyneddi’s death while it should have prompted changes within the state’s child welfare system and CPS.
CPS and the West Virginia State Police were aware of Kyneddi prior to her death.
After a controversial investigation, DoHS, which oversees CPS, tightened up its abuse and neglect referral process and said it would change how it screens those referrals.
McKay noted that there are over 100 calls a day to the CPS hotline.
“ … However, focusing solely on increasing CPS interventions overlooks the broader need for supporting families before they reach crisis points,” he said. “Lawmakers should expand access to family support services like mental health resources, parenting education and economic assistance to prevent situations from escalating to the point where CPS becomes involved.”
DoHS Secretary Cynthia Persily last month told lawmakers that the department was exploring drafting legislation that would allow the department to release limited information in child death or near death cases. The department faced scrutiny for refusing to turn over information related to Kyneddi, including the contents of CPS referrals made about the girl prior to their death.
A spokesperson for DoHS did not respond to questions for this story.
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