News from the South - West Virginia News Feed

Rapidly expanding school voucher programs pinch state budgets

Published

5 hours ago

May 21, 2025

westvirginiawatch.com – Kevin Hardy – 2025-05-21 05:00:00

by Kevin Hardy, West Virginia Watch
May 21, 2025

In submitting her updated budget proposal in March, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs lamented the rising costs of the state’s school vouchers program that directs public dollars to pay private school tuition.

Characterizing vouchers as an “entitlement program,” Hobbs said the state could spend more than $1 billion subsidizing private education in the upcoming fiscal year. The Democratic governor said those expenses could crowd out other budget priorities, including disability programs and pay raises for firefighters and state troopers.

It’s a dilemma that some budget experts fear will become more common nationwide as the costs of school choice measures mount across the states, reaching billions of dollars each year.

“School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don’t think is sustainable long term,” said Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Vouchers and scholarship programs, which use taxpayer money to cover private school tuition, are part of the wider school choice movement that also includes charter schools and other alternatives to public schools.

Opponents have long warned about vouchers draining resources from public education as students move from public schools to private ones. But research into several programs has shown many voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools. That means universal vouchers could drive up costs by creating two parallel education systems — both funded by taxpayers.

School vouchers are increasingly eating up state budgets in a way that I don’t think is sustainable long term.

– Whitney Tucker, director of state fiscal policy research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In Arizona, state officials reported most private school students receiving vouchers in the first two years of the expanded program were not previously enrolled in public schools. In fiscal year 2024, more than half the state’s 75,000 voucher recipients were previously enrolled in private schools or were being homeschooled.

“Vouchers don’t shift costs — they add costs,” Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who studies the issue, recently told Stateline. “Most voucher recipients were already in private schools, meaning states are paying for education they previously didn’t have to fund.”

Voucher proponents, though, say those figures can be misleading. Arizona, like other states with recent expansions, previously had more modest voucher programs. So some kids who were already enrolled in private schools could have already been receiving state subsidies.

In addition to increasing competition, supporters say the programs can actually save taxpayer dollars by delivering education at a lower overall cost than traditional public schools.

One thing is certain: With a record number of students receiving subsidies to attend private schools, vouchers are quickly creating budget concerns for some state leaders.

The rising costs of school choice measures come after years of deep cuts to income taxes in many states, leaving them with less money to spend. An end of pandemic-era aid and potential looming cuts to federal support also have created widespread uncertainty about state budgets.

Skyrocketing Hope Scholarship price tag, now around $100M, a concern for WV lawmakers making budget

“We’re seeing a number of things that are creating a sort of perfect storm from a fiscal perspective in the states,” said Tucker, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Last year, Arizona leaders waded through an estimated $1.3 billion budget shortfall. Budget experts said the voucher program was responsible for hundreds of millions of that deficit.

A new universal voucher program in Texas is expected to cost $1 billion over its next two-year budget cycle — a figure that could balloon to nearly $5 billion by 2030, according to a legislative fiscal note.

Earlier this year, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill expanding the state’s voucher program. But last week, he acknowledged his own “substantial concerns” about the state’s ability to fund vouchers and its public education obligations under the constitution.

“I think the legislature’s got a very tall task to understand how they’re going to be able to fund all of these things,” he said in an interview with WyoFile.

Voucher proponents, who have been active at the state level for years, are gaining new momentum with support from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

In January, Trump ordered federal agencies to allow states, tribes and military families to access federal money for private K-12 education through education savings accounts, voucher programs or tax credits.

Last week, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted in favor of making $20 billion available over the next four years for a federal school voucher program. Part of broader work on a bill to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the measure would need a simple majority in the House and the Senate to pass.

Hope Scholarship’s accelerating price tag sparks debate in WV House, $97M in funding approved

Martin Lueken, the director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for school choice measures, argues school choice measures can actually deliver savings to taxpayers.

Lueken said vouchers are not to blame for state budget woes. He said public school systems for years have increased spending faster than inflation. And he noted that school choice measures make up a small share of overall state spending — nationally about 0.3% of total state expenditures in states with school choice, he said.

“Public schooling remains one of the largest line items in state budgets,” he said in an interview. “They are still the dominant provider of K-12 education, and certainly looking at the education pie, they still receive the lion’s share.

“It’s not a choice problem. I would say that it’s a problem with the status quo and the public school system,” he said.

Washington, D.C., and 35 states offer some school choice programs, according to EdChoice. That includes 18 states with voucher programs so expansive that virtually all students can participate regardless of income.

But Lueken said framing vouchers as a new entitlement program is misleading. That’s because all students, even the wealthiest, have always been entitled to a public education — whether they’ve chosen to attend free public schools or private ones that charge tuition.

“At the end of the day, the thing that matters most above dollars are students and families,” he said. “Research is clear that competition works. Public schools have responded in very positive ways when they are faced with increased competitive pressure from choice programs.”

Public school advocates say funding both private and public schools is untenable.

In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are considering a major voucher expansion that would alter the funding structure for vouchers, potentially putting more strain on the state’s general fund.

The state spent about $629 million on its four voucher programs during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, which represents employees in school district finance, human resources and leadership.

The association warns proposed legislation could exacerbate problems with the “unaffordable parallel school systems” in place now by shifting more private schooling costs from parents of those students to state taxpayers at large.

Such expansion “could create the conditions for even greater funding challenges for Wisconsin’s traditional public schools and the state budget as a whole,” the association’s research director wrote in a paper on the issue.

In Arizona, Hobbs originally sought to eliminate the universal voucher program — a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled legislature. She has since proposed shrinking the program by placing income limits that would disqualify the state’s wealthiest families.

That idea also faced Republican opposition.

Legislators are now pushing to enshrine access to vouchers in the state constitution.

Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s 20,000-member teachers union, noted that vouchers and public education funds are both sourced from the general fund.

“So it almost immediately started to impact public services,” she said of the universal voucher program.

While the union says vouchers have led to cutbacks of important resources such as counselors in public schools, Garcia said the sweeping program also affects the state’s ability to fund other services like housing, transportation and health care.

“Every budget cycle becomes where can we cut in order to essentially feed this out-of-control program?” she said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.

The post Rapidly expanding school voucher programs pinch state budgets appeared first on westvirginiawatch.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content provides a detailed examination of the growing costs and budgetary challenges posed by school voucher programs, highlighting concerns chiefly raised by Democratic officials, public school advocates, and left-leaning policy experts like those at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The article gives substantial weight to the fiscal strains vouchers impose on public education funding, a topic commonly emphasized by progressive and center-left commentators. Although it includes perspectives from voucher proponents and Republican lawmakers, these views are typically framed in contrast to the concerns about budget sustainability and public school impact, which dominate the narrative. Overall, the piece leans slightly left of center by focusing more on the critiques of voucher programs and their implications for public education funding.

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New Human Services secretary inherited a broken WV foster care system. He promises improvements.

News from the South - West Virginia News Feed

New Human Services secretary inherited a broken WV foster care system. He promises improvements.

Published

1 day ago

May 20, 2025

Staff Editor

westvirginiawatch.com – Amelia Ferrell Knisely – 2025-05-20 05:00:00

by Amelia Ferrell Knisely, West Virginia Watch
May 20, 2025

On a Thursday evening in Parkersburg, a group of local residents gathered to discuss West Virginia foster care — a system that is struggling from top to bottom with thousands of kids in care.

A moderator asked foster and biological parents, child welfare workers, judges and others to describe their experience with the system.

Their responses: “Challenging.” “Overwhelming.” “Traumatizing.” “Broken.”

“Nobody would listen. Nobody would talk to me,” said Lisa Easter, who had more than 50 foster children in her home in 25 years.

Julie Jones stopped fostering after Child Protective Services went months without checking on a newborn baby in her care. She was mailed a blank birth certificate and worried if the state was aware of the child’s whereabouts. “I couldn’t do it any longer,” she said.

In the corner of the room, new Department of Human Services Secretary Alex Mayer listened as people described a frustrating system riddled with inconsistencies, staffing shortages, an overwhelmed judicial system, limited support and children who have been victims of it all.

Mayer, who came from South Dakota, believes it can be fixed. It’s going to take time, he says, but work is underway. He is focused on accountability, transparency and putting in processes that aren’t in place for consistency. He wants more in-state programs that can help kids with behavioral health struggles.

“It’s going to be incremental over time,” Mayer said. “I think it’s going to be a long road until we have everything addressed confidently … You’ll be seeing here shortly some really positive steps.”

A federal judge recently said West Virginia’s foster care system has suffered from “shocking neglect” and “bureaucratic indifference.”

There’s a shortage of social workers, support services and safe homes for children in a state that is fastest to remove children from homes and terminate parental rights. Too many children have ended up living in hotel rooms, and the state spent $70 million last year sending foster kids to out-of-state group homes.

“The thing that was shocking to me was the number of kids in care,” Mayer said.

There are more than 6,100 children in West Virginia foster care, and the number has skyrocketed during the state’s drug crisis. The state’s high poverty rate has contributed to the number, too.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey appointed 37–year-old Mayer to oversee DoHS.

Mayer will have to grapple with pervasive foster care problems as the Trump administration proposes cuts to programs that serve families in poverty and help vulnerable kids. The state could see a decline in federal funding, impacting programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that are intertwined with child welfare. DoHS also oversees Medicaid, SNAP and more.

“Child welfare is a very intricate, complex system, and there’s a lot of different players, which … obviously increases the level of complexity,” Mayer said. “I’ve been really intentional and just trying to get out to learn the system.”

Residents of Wood County attend a child welfare community listening session at the Wood County Resilience Center in Parkersburg, W.Va., on May 15, 2025. The meeting was facilitated by the West Virginia Department of Human Services. (Amelia Ferrell Knisely | West Virginia Watch)

‘I just have a passion for helping’

Mayer, who was adopted, spent time in the military before working at a residential facility that served people with severe mental illnesses He later worked in South Dakota’s state government, dealing with SNAP and child welfare.

“Different steps in my life have led me down this path,” he said. “Over time, I think I’ve just developed this passion for solving problems, which I think has inherently then created this desire to support families and kids … I just have a passion for helping.”

He has spent the last few months traveling the state meeting with his staff, touring residential facilities and trying to understand how the system works.

The federal government is continuing its oversight of West Virginia’s foster care system after it was flagged for sending too many children with disabilities to group homes. The state still sends children with disabilities to group homes and treatment centers at a rate three times the national average.

Two-hundred and seventy children are in out-of-state facilities around the county — some miles away from their biological families — because the state doesn’t have enough in-state beds that can serve children’s complex needs. The state’s CPS workers are required to visit kids once a month.

Mayer said he’s examining where the state could increase specialized care, like being able to serve children with aggressive or sexualized behaviors who aren’t able to be served in a traditional foster home.

“We don’t have placements for these kids. Well, that’s not an option anymore,” he said. “And, if those placements aren’t here … then we have to find a way to make that happen, because we want to keep kids as close as possible to their support network for a variety of reasons.”

There’s a shortage of foster families, and Mayer hopes to bolster recruitment and support services.

He noted that a glaring shortage of after school and summer programs for teens, which could be useful in helping working parents take in teenagers in foster care. Teens ages 13 to 17 are the most common age group in state foster care.

There’s also a need for creating agency processes that will breed consistently in decision making across the state, Mayer said. Child welfare cases involve a number of stakeholders — judges, attorneys, CPS workers and others — who all have an opinion and sometimes decision making about a child’s future.

“I think our practice model is one of those pieces that needs some real work,” he said.

Earlier this year, Mayer pushed back on a Republican-sponsored bill, which ultimately failed, that would have mandated an outside audit of the foster care system. Mayer vowed changes to lawmakers without a study.

Potential federal funding changes under Trump

West Virginia’s foster care system relies on federal and state funding, and there’s some unpredictability in spending due to kids fluctuating in and out of care and the rising price of out-of-state facilities.

Lawmakers, who have struggled in recent years to get a handle on the agency’s spending, allocated more than $300 million to foster care in their recently-passed budget. Their 2026 budget bill mandated that DoHS spend some money on designated line items to prevent the agency from shifting money around to pay bills. But Morrisey vetoed that idea, saying it was too restrictive for DoHS.

The Republican governor, who wants to reign in state spending, also vetoed line item funding for programs that support babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and foster children.

Mayer said that right now, he doesn’t think the department needs additional funding to tackle the crisis. It will likely rely on partnerships with the faith-based community, businesses and others that provide services to help children and families, he said.

“I think we just need to get more attention on what is it going to take?” he said. “I don’t know what that funding would be, or if it needs to be anything.”

The state’s federal funding could change since Republicans in Washington have proposed cuts to SNAP and Medicaid — a program that provides health insurance to West Virginia foster children and half of all children in the state.

“We’ve been watching that really intently,” Mayer said regarding the potential federal changes.

This month, he has traveled around the state for additional foster care listening sessions in towns including Beckley, Burlington and Wheeling to hear from families, CPS workers and others. It’s important, he said. The outside firm leading the sessions will compile a report detailing problems and potential solutions.

“I’m kind of excited to see, you know, what we’re able to accomplish here,” he said.

DoHS responds to latest update in foster care lawsuit

A Better Childhood, a group representing children suing the state over its troubled foster care system, wants the lawsuit revived after a judge tossed the case in February.

In an email, a DoHS spokesperson said, “We recognize that the only way to facilitate and bring about real change is to bring all of the key players together to openly and honestly discuss problems and develop real solutions.

“The first steps we are taking, through listening tours and meaningful conversations, are designed to build bridges among the necessary parties who must work together to find sustainable, long-term solutions for the children in our care.”

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The post New Human Services secretary inherited a broken WV foster care system. He promises improvements. appeared first on westvirginiawatch.com

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content presents a detailed critique of the West Virginia foster care system, emphasizing systemic failures, staffing shortages, and the consequences of budget cuts, often associated with conservative fiscal policies. While it includes voices from government officials like Secretary Alex Mayer and Governor Patrick Morrisey (a Republican), it highlights concerns about the impact of Republican-led budget decisions and federal GOP proposals to cut social programs. The article maintains a focus on social welfare and support for vulnerable children, reflecting a perspective sympathetic to increased accountability and resources for public services, which is commonly aligned with center-left viewpoints. However, it maintains a balanced tone by including responses from government officials and avoiding overt partisan language.

News from the South - West Virginia News Feed

Trump 'trusts his physicians' despite Biden's prostate cancer news, White House says

Published

2 days ago

May 19, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – WCHS Eyewitness News – 2025-05-19 18:37:14

SUMMARY: Former President Trump expressed sadness over President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis, questioning why the public was not informed earlier, given cancer’s long progression. Trump highlighted his own recent physical and cognitive tests, emphasizing trust in White House and Walter Reed doctors. He raised concerns about the accuracy of Biden’s cognitive assessments and the handling of health information, suggesting misinformation and lack of transparency from doctors or staff. While wishing Biden well, Trump stressed the importance of presidential health for national security, condemning conspiracy theories during this serious time and urging honesty about the former president’s fitness for office.

WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump remains in great health and “trusts his physicians,” despite concerns that White House doctors possibly missed a prostate cancer diagnosis for former President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.

#TrumpHealth #BidenCancerDiagnosis #WhiteHousePhysicians #PresidentialHealth #ProstateCancerAwareness
#TrumpPressBriefing #KarolineLeavitt #WalterReedMedicalCenter #PresidentialHealthCare
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News from the South - West Virginia News Feed

Christian’s Morning Forecast: Nice Start Before Another Rainy Week

Published

2 days ago

May 19, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – WOAY TV – 2025-05-19 06:32:17

SUMMARY: The weather for the upcoming week will start off nice with mostly sunny skies and a high of 76°F. A low-pressure system in the Dakotas will bring rain starting Tuesday night, continuing through Friday, with possible severe weather, including winds and hail. Rainfall amounts could reach up to one to two inches in some areas. The weather will be cooler than average in the Ohio Valley and parts of the North Central Plains, while warmer conditions are expected in Florida and on the West Coast. The weekend will bring some drier conditions, though nighttime showers may return by Sunday.