(Reporter's Notebook by Steven Allen Adams - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

You’ve got to give West Virginia Board of Education President Paul Hardesty credit. He keeps trying different ways to get the attention of lawmakers and Gov. Patrick Morrisey to tell them our 55 county school systems are heading toward a fiscal cliff.

The question is whether the legislative and executive branches are getting the message. Certainly, Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Amy Grady, R-Mason, and House Education Committee Chairman Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, understand. But efforts by the Legislature last year and earlier this year to make some changes to the school aid formula came to grinding halts.

It’s the perfect storm really. Decades of decreasing student enrollment continues to reduce the amount of state funding county school systems receive as determined by the complicated seven-step school aid formula which hasn’t seen a complete overhaul since it was put in place between 30 and 40 years ago.

The formula isn’t the only source of funding for county school systems, of course. Some counties that get a large amount of money through natural gas property tax collections don’t receive any state school aid funding. And let’s be honest, we’ve all heard about the bloat in county board of education offices, both in personnel and salaries.

One of my biggest frustrations with advocacy groups, such as the Cardinal Institute and the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, is that they dump all 55 county school systems into one bucket, then point and say, “Look at how much money is spent despite fewer students in schools.” But we don’t have one single statewide school system; we have 55 county school systems led by elected county boards of education and supervised by a state Department of Education with an unelected state board of education.

The issues within Wirt County Schools are going to be, in many cases, vastly different than the issues within Kanawha County Schools. Some county school systems have good community support, along with bonds and levies. Others don’t have this level of support. Some counties are able to employ more teachers than the school aid formula funds because of local tax dollars being available.

County school systems set their budgets for the next fiscal/school year based on October enrollment numbers for the previous fiscal/school year. With constantly decreasing enrollment numbers combined with the increase in both the number of special needs students and the costs to educate this population, the bucket of money keeps decreasing.

According to the Department of Education, county school systems have already closed all of the schools they predicted they might have to shut down in their 10-year facilities plans six years into this decade. They predict anywhere between 10 and 20 school closures for the next school year. And more than 5,000 students have left the public school system since the October enrollment numbers were released.

With county school system budgets decreasing, that means fewer schools, teachers and staff being laid off, and more time spent on school buses instead of in classrooms. But with more special needs students being added to the rolls, the costs of educating students are not going down. More time on buses means more maintenance costs. Cramming students from a closed school into another school has its own costs.

According to the RAND Corporation report commissioned for the Legislature and released in January, while overall state education spending is near the national average, the system fails to adequately account for the higher costs associated with low-income students and those with disabilities. The report’s authors provided recommendations, none of which were acted upon.

On one hand, lawmakers don’t want schools to close. But on the other, they will not give county school officials the tools they need to keep schools open and keep teachers employed, whether through reforms to the school aid formula or removing regulations that handcuff teachers and limit the time they could be using to teach. Lawmakers could also give teachers and staff meaningful pay increases beyond mere 3% or 5% raises.

So, what is it going to take? If the Legislature will not lead and if the Morrisey administration continues to give the Department of Education the silent treatment, what’s the next recourse? A parent of a special needs student filing a class action lawsuit and a circuit court judge rendering the 21st century version of the Recht decision that created the school aid formula in the first place?

I would remind lawmakers they are mandated by the state Constitution to “provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

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Speaking of education, sources are telling me that state Senate leadership may be eyeing removing Grady as Senate Education Committee chairwoman next year or sooner, to either be replaced with Assistant Majority Leader Patrica Rucker, R-Jefferson, or state Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh.

Rucker has served as Senate Education Committee chairwoman before. Roberts, a pastor and administrator of a Christian school in Raleigh County, also serves on the Senate Education Committee. Grady, an elementary school teacher in Mason County, has been a vocal critic of the school aid formula, so if she is removed as chair, I wonder whether the Senate will address reforms to the formula.

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I’m seeing a nationwide trend of elected officials who supported data centers in their communities losing elections. It makes me wonder whether lawmakers who supported House Bill 2014 in 2025, the data center/microgrid district law, will have hard times in the November general election.

I, for one, think the anti-data center backlash is silly. Not every data center is the same, and if the data center is not over-using local resources and getting its power from the grid while not passing those costs onto ratepayers, then it is simply another big rectangle building. But unfortunately, perception is reality these days, and there may be no convincing voters of the benefits of HB 2014 by these lawmakers.

I plan to get into this issue in the coming weeks.

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com.