W.VA. TREASURER RILEY MOORE

CHARLESTON — The Hope Scholarship — West Virginia’s educational savings account program that provides vouchers to certain eligible students for private and homeschool educational expenses — is on track to be made available to all eligible students in 2026.

The State Treasurer’s Office announced Tuesday that the Hope Scholarship program met an enrollment figure benchmark it was required to meet by July 1 in order to open up eligibility to all West Virginia public, private, and homeschool students/families by the 2026-27 school year.

“I’m thrilled to announce that Hope Scholarship Program enrollment numbers have met the threshold established by the Legislature to expand this program to all West Virginia school children beginning in the fall of 2026,” said State Treasurer Riley Moore, chairman of the Hope Scholarship Board. “This will be a monumental leap forward for school choice, allowing tens of thousands of additional West Virginia families to access this program.”

The Hope Scholarship — passed by the Legislature in 2021 and which went into effect at the beginning of 2023 following a legal fight and West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals decision in its favor — gives parents the option to use an equivalent portion of the per-pupil expenditure for their children from the state School Aid Formula for educational expenses, such as private or religious school tuition, home school, tutoring, learning aids and other acceptable expenses.

For the 2024-2025 school year, eligible families will receive 100% of $4,921 from the Hope Scholarship program if they applied between March 1 and June 17, with the amount decreasing by 25% depending on the time period parents apply during three application windows (through Sept. 15, Sept. 16 through Nov. 30, and Dec. 1 through Feb. 28, 2025).

Until the 2026-27 school year, the Hope Scholarship is limited to children who are eligible to be enrolled in a county school system’s kindergarten program the year the parents are applying, public school students who were enrolled full-time during the school year prior to applying for the scholarship, or public school students enrolled for at least 45 days during the current school year.

In order for the Hope Scholarship to expand to all West Virginia children regardless of enrollment status, State Code required the total number of Hope Scholarship participants and applicants to remain below 5% of net enrollment in public schools for the previous school year as of July 1. According to the State Treasurer’s Office, the number of Hope Scholarship students and applicants was 9,980 as of Monday, below the 12,416 target.

The Legislature budgeted $18 million to the Department of Education for the Hope Scholarship program for the current fiscal year. Lawmakers appropriated another $27.3 million for the Hope Scholarship during a May special session to address increasing demand for the program.

According to Moore, opening up the Hope Scholarship program could allow between 30,000 and 40,000 West Virginia children to be eligible for the program in the fall of 2026.

“This expansion will allow all West Virginia families to use this program as they pursue the educational opportunities they believe work best for their children.”

Opponents of the Hope Scholarship program have complained about the cost to taxpayers. A fiscal note provided by the Department of Education in 2021 estimated the Hope Scholarship could cost taxpayers $126.6 million by the 2026-27 school year. County school systems also lose money from the school aid formula for every student who leaves public school for private schools or home schools.

“Statewide, the loss of funding from the public education system to the Hope Scholarship is expected to total up to $21.6 million in the 2024-25 school year,” according to a December 2023 report from the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy, a left-of-center public policy research organization. “…School districts across West Virginia will lose the state aid funding for an estimated 364 staff, including approximately 301 professional educators and 63 school service personnel.

“As lawmakers mull the expansion of the Hope Scholarship, research from around the country shows that growing voucher programs have mixed or negative achievement results for students who participate in them, while a lack of accountability regarding public spending raises questions about where the funds diverted from the public education system are going,” the report continued.