West Virginia Invests in Public Schools… But Will Now Add Charter Schools
Until this week, West Virginia was one of a handful of states which had never experimented with school privatization. But on Monday night, the West Virginia Senate adopted an omnibus education bill passed a week ago by the West Virginia House of Delegates. Governor Jim Justice has said he will sign the bill. The bill includes a raise for teachers, but it also introduces privately operated charter schools into West Virginia for the first time.
Some History
The debate has been long and contentious. It began in February of 2018, when school teachers across the entire state of West Virginia walked out over the conditions in their public schools and their low pay, which has been driving fine teachers out of the profession and away from the state. With that statewide strike, West Virginia’s public school teachers launched the #RedforEd movement that swept across Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Denver, Los Angeles and Oakland.
The 2018, West Virginia teachers’ strike ended when Governor Jim Justice and both houses of the state legislature agreed to a 5 percent raise for the state’s teachers, support staff, bus drivers and West Virginia state troopers.
Then last October (2018), Governor Justice promised West Virginia’s teachers an additional 5 percent raise. In February (2019), the House of Delegates came forward with an omnibus education bill which included the raise. But schoolteachers walked out statewide for the second year in a row to protest the addition of two forms of public school privatization—the introduction of charter schools into the state and the launching of an Education Savings Account neo-voucher program—to the House bill. Finally, the state’s House of Delegates CONTINUE READING: West Virginia Invests in Public Schools… But Will Now Add Charter Schools | janresseger
