West Virginia gubernatorial candidates Democrat Huntington Mayor Steve Williams (center) and Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (right) met for their first and only debate hosted by West Virginia MetroNews’ Hoppy Kercheval (left) on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (Teran Malone | WVMetroNews)
Craig Snyder, a biology teacher at Winfield High School, wants the state’s next governor to give teachers a pay raise.
West Virginia’s teacher pay is the worst in the country. With proposed price increases to the Public Employees Insurance Agency — a monthly spousal surcharge for state employees would more than double — Snyder said teachers need more than just a pay bump to possibly cover their insurance cost; he called it “quite the mess.”
“It would be great if it could be adjusted in a controlled manner, and we could actually just get pay raises that were not just responses to the increase in premiums,” said Snyder, who has taught for three decades. “The governor did not solve that problem after the teacher strikes of 2018 and 2019.”
Governor’s race candidates Republican Patrick Morrisey and Democrat Steve Williams both found common ground during a debate on Tuesday when they agreed that the state should find a long-term funding solution for PEIA and raise teachers’ pay.
But the two men differed on how they’d solve other problems in public education, like funding shortfalls, a wave of proposed school consolidations and low test scores. There’s also a dwindling number of students, partially fueled by students leaving to use the state’s education savings account program.
Morrisey, the state’s attorney general, sees a continued focus on school choice as a key to encouraging public schools to be more competitive. Giving families choices would drive up the quality of public schools, he said. “The quickest way we do that is by having the Hope Scholarship be very broad,” he said.
The Hope Scholarship is already one of the nation’s broadest ESA programs, providing $4,400 per student to use for private school, homeschooling and more with little restrictions. Its supporters, including Morrisey, argue that giving families money helps them access learning opportunities, and most families use it to attend private, religious schools.
It will be available to all West Virginia students in 2026. During the debate, Morrisey didn’t say more on what it might look like to expand the program.
Fred Albert, president of American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia, said Morrisey’s proposed school choice expansion “would further defund public education and treat the majority of West Virginia students, who remain in public schools, as second-class citizens.”
“We can’t expect better achievement from public school students by taking resources and investment away from them. Many of these students are among the most vulnerable of our state’s population and require even more resources to overcome their challenges,” Albert said.
Williams, a three-term mayor of Huntington, voiced concerns about public dollars flowing into private schools. More than $300,000 in Hope Scholarship funds have been used at out-of-state schools, and a 2023 West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report estimated that it would take $21 million out of public schools.
“How are we able to control where those public dollars are going?” Williams asked.
Could county school boards see consolidations?
Under West Virginia’s school aid formula, the state’s portion of per pupil funding follows the child if they exit public schools to use the Hope Scholarship.
School leaders have said students leaving for the Hope Scholarship coupled with the state’s population decline caused budget shortfalls.
Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association teachers union, said he expects more education job cuts in the future, leaving less resources for students who remain in public schools. Educators who remain are tasked with more, he said.
“As the number of students dwindles, counties are facing more and more financial situations,” he said. “We’re seeing many of our counties have these consolidation discussions because of students leaving.”
Multiple counties this year have announced plans for school consolidations, including Clay, Kanawha and Wetzel.
Morrisey and Williams also weighed in on possible consolidations of county school boards in the wake of dwindling student numbers.
Williams would like to see the creation of “regional compacts,” where there could be a consolidation of administrative duties.
“What I prefer is regionalization, but also maintaining the counties,” Williams said. “The reality is, we can save an awful lot of money … if [we] give some freedom to the local school boards to be able to make some decisions,” he said.
Morrisey has made auditing state agencies and programs a key component of his campaign.
“I think we can find efficiencies. Because [in] 55 counties, there’s got to be a way to save money within those counties,” he said. “Would I consolidate? I think we can certainly find ways to reduce some of the bloated bureaucracies that exist and share services and do things much better.”
April Estep is a teacher in Boone County who is running for the House of Delegates as a Democrat. She worries that consolidating her local school board with border counties, like Kanawha and Logan, could mean less resources for her small county.
“Who’s going to make sure we get the resources we need? I think losing that local control would be a bad idea,” she said.
Morrisey and Williams didn’t articulate clear plans for increasing the state’s low test scores, which still lag after pandemic learning loss. The latest scores showed that 35% of students were proficient in math, 44% percent were proficient in English language arts and 29% were proficient in science.
“One of the things I’m hopeful to do if I get the opportunity to serve as governor, is begin to sit down with all of the folks who are running a lot of these schools and talk to them about the metrics — the stem metrics, English and math and science — and look for ways that we can improve,” Morrisey said.
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