On March 29, 2021, the Hope Scholarship was passed into law in West Virginia. At the time of its passage, Hope was the nation’s most expansive education savings account — available to 93% of West Virginia families looking for alternative education options. Aptly named, the Hope Scholarship represented a shift in the Mountain State toward greater education freedom and hope for families that had previously felt trapped by a state that was prioritizing systems over students.
West Virginia lead the pack during the Year of Educational Choice in 2021 as 18 states enacted new programs and 21 expanded existing programs. It is estimated that approximately 3.6 million students became eligible for education choice programs in 2021.
But on July 6, 2022, Hope was deferred for the Mountain State. After months of providers and families preparing to participate, the Kanawha County Circuit Court issued a preliminary and permanent injunction against the program — halting all operations and leaving over 3,100 students in a state of confusion.
Now, a little more than a month later, a request for stay has been denied by the Intermediate Court of Appeals, forcing families to scrap their plans and quickly pivot without much guidance. For many, this means returning to the traditional public schools that were failing to meet their students’ needs.
Many of West Virginia’s parents, including my colleagues at the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, our friends at West Virginia Families United for Education and Love Your School – WV, and me, have spoken to hundreds of families whose lives have been thrown into chaos in the wake of this ruling.
The Hope Scholarship was a lifeline for many families that, prior to its passage, had no obvious pathway for giving their children a brighter educational future. And it was a lighthouse to guide other states toward greater educational freedom for their own citizens.
School choice detractors often say that families should pay for alternatives out of pocket. But that sentiment is thinly veiled class discrimination. Most families, especially those in West Virginia, don’t have the means to pay for an education twice — once through taxes and again out of pocket for an alternative education option.
“We were happy to have our daughters approved for the program. We are trying to find other options and resources to be able to afford a private school, but because of my personal disability, I cannot work more than I do. Our family needs the Hope Scholarship to be able to afford the school our daughters need,” said Chelsea, a mother of two Hope scholars.
“The Hope Scholarship was such a blessing for my family. My husband just started a new job and took a significant pay cut, so not having to worry about how we were going to afford our son’s education was a relief. After this recent ruling, my husband and I will be back at the drawing board,” said Jennifer, a mother from Boone County.
School choice opponents also frequently criticized the Hope Scholarship as insufficient for families whose children may need additional learning therapies. But as Katie Switzer, a mother from Morgantown, can attest, the Hope Scholarship was the only way she was able to help her daughter access the learning therapies she needs for apraxia of speech, dyslexia, and ADHD. The loss of Hope couldn’t have come at a worse time, Switzer said.
“We pay for Ruth’s speech therapy out of a pretax health savings account. At the same time as the hearing, my third child had heart surgery. This procedure cost will max out our out-of-pocket health insurance cost. The high cost will completely drain the HSA we normally use to pay for Ruth’s speech therapy,” she said. “We were depending on the Hope Scholarship to fund Ruth’s speech therapy services and dyslexia reading program in the fall. Now we are forced to change our entire support plan for her with only a month before school is supposed to start.”
The pain these families are feeling is unmistakable. It is disappointing that the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals did not grant a stay of the injunction against the Hope Scholarship program. As an education freedom advocate, I am left with the unenviable task of delivering bad news to families and helping them pick up the pieces.
The lighthouse’s rays may be dimmed by fog, but thankfully, they haven’t been snuffed out. Both the Institute for Justice and the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office are appealing the ruling to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. However, this should never have happened in the first place. It’s time we stopped deferring Hope for the families of the Mountain State.
Amanda Kieffer is the communications director at the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy.
