Editor’s note: This news story appeared Wednesday on West Virginia’s wchstv.com.
A good idea, or an unconstitutional overreach? That’s the big debate on West Virginia’s new Hope Scholarship program.
It provides families with public money to help pay for private or religious schools or to home-school their child.
“We tried public in the beginning,” Haley Hereford, a parent in Huntington, said. “He didn’t do well it was a large class a difficult class.”
Zander recently went to a public pre-school, but it wasn’t for him.
“He really struggled and didn’t want to go. He’d get really upset. We switched to Discovery Tree when I got hired there and he’s done amazing,” Hereford said.
Zander’s mom works at a private school and wants him to start kindergarten there in the fall. She recently applied for the Hope Scholarship, an education savings account voucher program, that would give families public money to help offset the cost of private school tuition.
West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore said the school voucher law allows $4,600 to be given to eligible students.
“That’s the state funding portion that will follow the student. The federal money does not follow that student,” Moore said. “And usually like a one-third, two-third split. For a student funding package, you’re talking about two-thirds of that is federal, one-third is state. So that $4,600 is going to go follow the student. If the student were to return, the dollars still follow the student at the end of the day.”
However, a lawsuit filed on behalf of several West Virginia parents is seeking a judgement and an injunction against the Hope Scholarship program.
According to a lawsuit recently filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court, the Hope Scholarship program is unconstitutional. Under Article 7 in the suit, it states “The Legislature can only provide for a system of free public school. It cannot support a separate system of private schooling or homeschooling.”
“It’s their money, their tax dollars. They should use the money they see fit,” Moore said. “This is about educational funding. They’re using their dollars to educate their children.”
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