The West Virginia Department of Education is requesting an additional roughly $5.4 million in state money next school year to - among other proposals - increase graduation rates, cut the cost of Advanced Placement exams, extend school bus stop arms and fund drug testing for students seeking vocational training.
Department officials presented these "improvement package" requests to the state school board Wednesday alongside the department's main, preliminary $2.4 billion budget request for the next fiscal year, which will start July 1, 2016. The requests are due to the West Virginia State Budget Office by the start of next month, so Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin can begin drafting a proposed 2016-17 state budget to present to the Legislature for approval in 2016 session.
The Department of Education's $2.4 billion main budget proposal - which includes requested federal and state funding, most of which is passed through the department to school districts, or pays for the health insurance and retirement benefits of those districts' employees - asks for $3.4 million less in spending compared to the current fiscal year. That decrease is due mostly to automatic spending decreases mandated by state law.
The largest portion of the department's requested new improvement package spending - $2 million - would go to expanding the state's Innovation Zones to increase graduation and attendance rates and support science, technology, engineering and math teaching. State Schools Superintendent Michael Martirano said he wants an Innovation Zone project, which can give schools extra funding and flexibility from certain state laws and policies to pilot reforms, in every county. Department spokeswoman Kristin Anderson said the additional money would allow the state to fund up to 20 Innovation Zones, up from the seven to 10 currently supported.
Preliminary 2014-15 school year statewide standardized test scores released Wednesday showed less than half of West Virginia students in elementary, middle and high schools displayed proficiency in science and math - only one-fifth of 11th graders met the mark in math.
The second largest improvement package request - $1.6 million - is to reduce the cost to students for each AP exam from $91 to $50 and expand the state's Virtual School program.
"Some counties are able to offer more, and have the ability to access more, and it just breaks my heart when students don't have the access to be able to engage in higher level courses," Martirano told board members.
He said online courses are a way to decrease this inequity.
The money would also fund more full- and part-time teachers to offer more online AP courses, as well as additional courses in the "critical shortage areas" of math, science and world languages, with the goal of giving every student the opportunity to take at least one online class before graduation. It'd also pay for West Virginia teachers to develop online courses.
A third request, for $800,000, would increase efforts to improve literacy specifically among children in their early years. The current fiscal year budget, and the draft budget for next fiscal year, already include $5.7 million for the West Virginia Leaders of Literacy: Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a statewide initiative that seeks to raise the third-grade proficiency rate among Mountain State students who qualify for free or reduced lunch to 66 percent over the next five school years. The campaign includes a broad array of possible initiatives, including reducing student absences, encouraging parents to read to their children and identifying students who have problems with vision or hearing before they enter school.
Another requested $500,000 would go to districts to help their students achieve the certificates necessary to become welders, electricians or computer technicians, or to enter other fields. That money also would fund required drug testing for students who take jobs as part of the Simulated Workplace program.
The final $500,000 request is to help fund bus stop arm extensions and additional cameras that are meant to photograph the license plates and drivers of vehicles that illegally fail to stop for school buses.
Lewisville, North Carolina-based Bus Safety Solutions already is providing 10 free stop arm extensions each to Kanawha County, which reported that drivers illegally passed stopped school buses 90 times on a single day in April; Cabell County, which reported 35 illegal passes on a single day tested; and Greenbrier County, which reported eight illegal passes on one day. The counties currently are testing the 6-foot extensions, which cost about $950 each. The extensions fold out into adjacent lanes of traffic and have breakaway bolts in case they are struck by illegally passing vehicles.
Anderson said the pilot program will end Sept. 4, and the department will review data to see if the arm extensions work and decide whether to allow those three districts and all the others in West Virginia to purchase more extensions for their school buses. During this school year, districts could pay for the arms using part of the $15 million allocated across the state for bus replacements and other bus work.
Joe Panetta, the department's chief operations officer, said the West Virginia State Budget Office asked all state agencies to keep their 2016-17 main budget proposals around the same level as this fiscal year, and directed agencies to put any requested spending increases in improvement packages.
"The instruction from the State Budget Office was to seriously look at any improvement package request, and they would only consider ones that are, you know, crucial," Panetta said. "But, we feel like these are necessary."
Lawmakers usually pass the state budget bill in extended days after the regular legislative session ends. The governor has extensive line-item veto powers that he or she can use to make whatever budget bill lawmakers pass align closer to his original proposal, as Tomblin did for the current fiscal year budget.
The $3.4 million drop in the Department of Education's main 2016-17 request is expected mostly because of automatic spending decreases within the largest portion of its budget: the state aid funding formula, which is set by state law and calculates the money passed through the department to school districts.
Panetta is estimating the formula will cause a $12.5 million decrease in the $1.1 billion total basic state aid account due to continuing trends that also dropped funding to districts this school year. Those trends include lower student enrollment, which causes the formula to provide less per-pupil dollars. Panetta expects about 1,100 fewer students statewide next school year.
Another trend he expects to continue is the retirement of more experienced teachers, who are paid more based on years of service and degree level, and an overall continued rise in counties' assessed property values. The formula automatically adjusts for counties' increasing local, regular levy property tax collections by requiring the state to pitch in less money to districts.
The department expects much of the projected $12.5 million drop in the basic state aid account to be offset by increasing benefit costs for district employees and retirees, including a $7 million increase in the annual payment to make up for the historical underfunding of the Teachers' Retirement System, raising that one-year payment to $305.6 million, and a $1.1 million increase in current retirement payments, raising that annual payment to $67.6 million.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@ wvgazette.com, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.