More than 7,500 public school students in West Virginia transferred from their zoned schools to other schools both in and out of their county during the 2023-24 school year.

Over the last few years, state lawmakers have expanded students’ ability to transfer for education and sports, giving schools limited reasons to deny requests.

West Virginia Department of Education showed that 6,135 students transferred to a school in their county (known as intracounty transfers), and 1,425 students transferred to a public school out of their county.

Parents accessing child care and after school care was a major driver for transfers in elementary school, where the bulk of the transfers occurred, according to the state education department.

“A vast majority of it is because of the parents and where they’re working and what’s available with day care and things like that at the elementary level,” Sonya White, deputy superintendent of the West Virginia Department of Education, told lawmakers while sharing the data.

High school transfers were less common, White said, and many were due to athletics. A 2023 West Virginia permits student athletes to change schools one time during their high school career without having to change residency. The law to and athlete injuries.

During the 2023-24 school year, 432 athletes to high schools in West Virginia — tripling the number from the number of transfers from the previous year-and-a-half. The West Virginia Secondary Schools and Activities Commission did not return a request for updated numbers for the current school year.

Students transferring within the county do not impact state aid funding unless the student is transferring from a county board of education to a public charter school, according to the WVDE.

Cabell County Schools, one of the state’s largest school districts, had the state’s highest rate of transfers, with 788 students approved to transfers within the county and 136 students transferring out of county.

Keith Thomas, Cabell County Schools’ director of health, wellness and student support services, explained that accessing after-school care or schools closer to parents’ jobs often drove the transfers in his county.

“Not all schools have after-school programs and many of our parents work until five or six,” Thomas said, adding that only some programs accept the state’s .

He added, “A lot of our transfers are that we have parents who are teachers, and they want their kids to go to school with them,” he said.

Accessing special education services also spurred transfers, Thomas said. And some schools are better equipped and certified to teach students with autism.

In Lewis County, Samantha Ribeiro Matos has transferred her six- and seven-year-old boys, who need special education services, to three schools in three years in search of the right academic fit.

One transfer happened after Matos said she found out three days before school started that her zoned elementary school didn’t offer a self-contained classroom, which one of her sons needed. School leaders asked her to transfer the largest elementary school in the county, she said.

“We felt like that was a good option as it was presented to us, but we also did not have a choice,” she said.

State can deny transfers for limited reasons

West Virginia lawmakers expanded students transfer eligibility in 2023 amid the Republican-led Legislature’s . The , signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice, was expansion of 2019 . It allows a county board to permit any eligible student to apply for enrollment in any school in the county as long as the school has the grade-level capacity and certain programs and services that aren’t available in the students’ attendance zone.

The law also allows for open enrollment for public school students between counties without requiring the approval of the county the student resides in prior to transfer.

Denials are permitted for limited reasons, including classroom size limits and student discipline history.

The state education department’s data showed that 483 students were denied transfers last school year. The majority of the denials were students looking to transfer to another school within their county.

White said that a lack of classroom space was the leading reason behind denials.

“The denials are mostly elementary because we have a cap on class sizes in [kindergarten] through five, and we don’t in seventh grade and beyond,” she said.

Jason Huffman, state director for conservative grassroots organization Americans For Prosperity, reviewed county-level denials through information he received through the Freedom of Information Act.

Counties denied student transfers for reasons not permitted under the law, he said, including academic performance, tardies and parent conduct.

“I think particularly with things like absences or tardies, perhaps it is a case that the child is being bullied or or the child is unhappy in their learning situation,” Huffman said. “I don’t think that’s a viable reason to deny a transfer. It kind of disregards the individuality of the student.”

Huffman also noted that only five of the county school districts in the state published their open enrollment data on their website as required under the 2023 law.

He raised these concerns in a letter to education committee leaders in the Legislature, and he wanted the West Virginia Department of Education to remind counties about the appropriate reasons for transfer denials and publishing open enrollment data.

Sen. Patricia Rucker, chair of the Senate’s School Choice Committee, said she had heard from a few parents whose transfers were denied. “When they appealed to the superintendent, transfers were approved,” she said in an email.

“I was actually pleased when seeing the letter from AFP and felt the numbers demonstrate there are hundreds of parents seeking and getting the education they need for their children. And staying in the public education system,” Rucker, R-Berkeley, continued.

Christy Day, spokesperson for the education department, said the department will continue to work with county school systems to assist them with compliance with the resident and non-resident transfer statute.

Huffman said his organization plans to continue the implementation of the law.

“We want to make sure that the intent that lawmakers wanted to give to parents — the power of choice — is being followed to the full fruition of the law,” he said. “It’s for the future of the children in our state.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .

When New Jersey students head back to classrooms this week, many will return to schools with too few teachers.

The state has for years faced , with particularly troubling vacancies in subjects like math, science, special education, and instruction for English language learners. And those vacancies persist despite legislators’ efforts to and steer more students toward careers in education.

Sean Spiller, president of the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said schools are seeing the impact of the shortages.

“We’re seeing class sizes increase. We’re seeing courses not being offered, and we’re seeing that the educators who are still remaining in the profession are being overburdened in terms of how to pick up some of the work because of unfilled classrooms. It’s a big concern,” Spiller said.

The exact degree of the shortages remains unknown despite recent efforts to quantify New Jersey’s educator workforce, but the number of would-be teachers has fallen precipitously over the last decade.

New Jersey’s teacher workforce has remained stable over the last decade at roughly 118,000 educators, according to drafted by Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development.

Researchers examined 11 years worth of data and found that for every teacher that left the profession in the 2022-2023 school year, the state issued just 1.1 provisional teaching certificates, compared to 2.9 certifications in the 2013-2014 school year. Less than a quarter of those pursuing education degrees in the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years eventually became teachers, and only 43% earned a degree in education, the study says.

The study warns that a ratio approaching one departure for one new teacher could quickly lead to more severe shortages because at least 10% of teachers leave the profession within their first three years.

Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark) is a former education chair who has remained active in the space following her ascent through the ranks of leadership (she’s the Senate’s majority leader). Ruiz said the state should do away with its residency requirement for teachers, at least while the shortages remain dire.

“No one under any circumstance is saying ‘not New Jersey first,’” she said. “We always want to be New Jersey first, but when there isn’t enough New Jersey, as policymakers, administrators, and government entities, we should be responsible enough to say we need human capital in these spaces. Our students deserve better.”

Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), the current education chairman, agreed lifting the residency restriction would help bridge schools’ staffing gaps.

The Senate in May approved a bill that would for three years in a unanimous vote, but the measure has not advanced in the Assembly, where it has the backing of Assemblywoman Pam Lampitt, the lower chamber’s education chairwoman. A similar bill in the last legislative session.

Gopal said he was considering legilsation to boost teacher compensation but said the legislation is still in very early stages.

A separate bill that would rework the state’s funding formula is expected to be introduced in mid-September, but Gopal cautioned that bill would likely see significant changes as it moves through committees to floor votes.

A reworked formula should include provisions to extend school budget timelines to prevent last-minute staff cuts and allow districts to better plan their budgets, Ruiz said.

Rolling back a Christie-era policy that doubled the state’s student teaching requirement from a semester to a full school year could also boost the state’s educator workforce, Spiller said.

“We had the best schools in the nation before. We have the best schools now. Why did we double the length of time? That is something that we could bring back in line to what it was before and not cost any money,” he said.

Policymakers said the state must also address teacher departures to stabilize the workforce. The Heldrich Center’s report found that while departures remained roughly level save for spikes during the pandemic, the share of teachers who left of their own accord — and not for budgetary reasons — has spiked over the 11-year period.

Gopal pointed to the increased politicization as schools, noting workforce trends had reversed somewhat after Republican attacks over school gender policy and library collections ebbed.

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration, which spurred school cuts amid the Great Recession and warred with teachers unions over health benefits and pensions, also slimmed the teaching candidate pool, Spiller said.

“From the vitriol that we heard before to the fundamental changes to the systems that we see financially now, that has led to less people engaging in the process to become a teacher, and certainly less people choosing to continue moving forward to become an actual teacher,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com. Follow New Jersey Monitor on and .

But if the family wants to move their child to better schools in the nearby Elwood, Union or Manhattan districts they would be hard-pressed to find housing in that price range. 

These invisible boundaries are what researchers at Bellwether Education Partners call “border barriers” — lines between districts that frequently keep low-income families out of higher-quality schools. The Chicago area, the authors write, has 45 such divisions, where families in low-income housing brush up against districts with more resources and better schools but few, if any, affordable rental units. 

Bellwether explores these differences in “Priced Out of Public Schools,” released last week that adds a new layer to our understanding of how closely housing and education are intertwined. Districts with out-of-reach rental prices spend, on average, at least $4,600 more per student — the result of higher property taxes. While states’ school finance formulas aim to equalize funding across districts, they don’t make up the gap. 

“As we think about what we need to do moving forward, it’s not just an education solution alone,” said Alex Spurrier, co-author of the report and a senior analyst at Bellwether Education Partners, an education think tank. States, he said, should consider multiple policy levers to address “what is a very thorny challenge.”

The report comes as continue to rise and many low-income families , long delays for federal rental assistance funds and landlords who reject . When families relocate to more affordable housing, their children often must leave not only their schools, but their districts as well — especially in states like Texas, California and Illinois, where metro area maps are dotted with dozens of small school districts. The authors label the phenomenon “educational gerrymandering,” the creation of smaller, exclusive districts that cater to higher-income, less racially diverse student populations. While the report recommends multiple approaches to address the disparities, experts note that altering district boundaries is politically risky: People with money are likely to vote against those who meddle too much.

“People who have wealth are willing to use it to get high-quality schools.” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “The rules of the game do produce some inequities.” 

Mergers and secessions

Some of those rules date back to nearly a century ago when the nation entered a movement that by 1970 had cut more than 100,000 districts down to less than 20,000. Now there are 13,000.

But district mergers tended to lack high-minded ambitions to create more racial or socioeconomically balanced schools. Rather, they were likely to be unions of districts with similar demographics, explained Tomas Monarrez, a research associate at the Urban Institute who has studied racial and ethnic segregation in schools.

Some of the starkest examples of drawing boundaries to benefit wealthier populations include recent efforts by some communities to break away from larger, often county-level, school districts. the 2017 report from EdBuild, noted 73 secessions since 2000, with another 55 either attempted or in progress.

Several have launched in the Northeast, but the Bellwether report also includes examples in the South. In Memphis, Tennessee, for example, communities within Shelby County split off into smaller districts in 2014 after the majority Black Memphis district dissolved and merged into the county district. In Alabama, there have been 10 successful attempts since 2000, with in the works. 

“At the very least, we should be wary of those secession trends,” Monarrez said. Mergers, however, can minimize disparities in access to quality schools if leaders pursue them with the goal of improving equity, he said.

Some states have created where multiple districts share tax revenue or allow students to transfer into schools across district lines as a way to reduce disparities. The Nebraska legislature created such a plan involving 11 Omaha-area districts. In Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, encompassing Boston and the surrounding area, is another example.

But Malkus, at the American Enterprise Institute, cautioned that such options only tend to “nibble around the margins.” Daniel Thatcher, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, noted that open enrollment programs can make school funding disparities worse because the receiving district gets the state funding for those students.

School choice programs are another way to allow students to attend a school outside their neighborhood, the authors suggest. The results of that approach are mixed. that within a district, charters lead to a slight decrease in student diversity. But across a metro area, the presence of charters can create schools that are more racially mixed.

That’s what leaders in School District 49, adjacent to the Colorado Springs, Colorado, district have found. The district is considered “inaccessible” to lower-income families because there’s not enough affordable housing to meet the demand, according to the Bellwether report. But more than a third of the district’s students come from outside the district for traditional, charter and online options, said Peter Hilts, the system’s chief education officer. Half of the Colorado Springs district’s students are nonwhite, compared to 43 percent in District 49.

“There’s no question that open, inclusive choice has made us a more diverse district,” Hilts said. “If you genuinely want educational equity, you must believe in school choice, and if you truly advocate for inclusive choice, you must address other factors like transportation, affordable housing, and childcare options that can inhibit choice.”

Housing affordability not only affects families wishing to move into a district, but also those who want to stay put. In Tacoma, Washington, low-income families are beginning to leave because of a lack of housing options, said Elliott Barnett, a senior planner for the city. Proximity to quality schools is a key element of , a project that recommends building additional types of housing in neighborhoods that were previously reserved for single-family homes.

“We know that where a person lives has a link to their access to opportunities that have a big impact on our lives such as education achievement, income, life expectancy and others.” Barnett said. “Even if kids can travel from elsewhere to a high-performing school outside their neighborhood, that is another burden to overcome.” 

Some states, like and , have recently passed legislation to increase the supply of affordable housing. While such efforts haven’t always taken school locations into account, Monarrez said that’s beginning to change. California governor Gavin Newsom mentioned the need for a wider array of housing options near schools as one goal of his state’s legislation. 

The next step, Monarrez said, is for policymakers to reconsider district boundaries as well.

“We need to find out more about what would happen if we changed these lines,” he said. “A viable solution is drawing better lines.”

Disclosure: Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether Education Partners. He sits on ����Ӱ��’s board of directors.

States have until Monday to distribute $81 billion in federal relief funds to districts — two-thirds of the total for K-12 schools in the American Rescue Plan. And while the law requires districts to put aside 20 percent of their funding to address learning loss, an early review of spending plans shows most aren’t adding tutoring programs, extending the school year or adopting other programs expected to help students catch up.

Instead, they are largely using the money to fill budget gaps, hire staff and issue “thank you” bonuses to teachers, Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, said during a Tuesday webinar. Her team has consulted with district finance officials and reviewed school board documents and media reports.

“That surprised us because tutoring is sort of the darling … for how to spend federal funds,” Roza said Tuesday, referring to multiple studies in recent months about the effectiveness of “high-dosage” tutoring programs.

Chad Aldeman, policy director at Edunomics Lab, added there’s little evidence so far of efforts to focus on the needs of the most vulnerable students. “The pandemic has affected different students differently, and we’re seeing a lot of one-size-fits-all,” he said. Facility improvements, he added, might be a smart use of one-time funds, but they don’t really help students most impacted by the pandemic.

The relief bill, passed in March, represents the largest-ever, one-time influx of federal funds for K-12, setting up a “fast and furious” planning process for districts over the next few months, Roza said. According to the law, districts have to submit spending plans to their states in August and provide updates or revisions every six months. They have until the end of September 2023 to spend the money. Meanwhile, leaders are facing heightened scrutiny from parents and advocacy groups looking to hold leaders accountable for helping students recover from months of remote learning. District spending plans must demonstrate that officials made extensive efforts to involve parents, educators and students.

“That means districts can’t go into a dark, smoke-filled room and make a plan,” she said, urging officials to be more transparent than usual about hiring staff, launching new programs and issuing contracts for services. Some superintendents, she said, are still operating under emergency powers, allowing them to sign off on expenditures without school board approval.

‘They can do better’

The National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit law firm based in Oakland, California, is among those closely tracking whether districts are spending the funds on students with the greatest need. On Tuesday, the organization joined with three other California groups to release of how 48 districts in the state planned to use relief funds from last year.

While there were some bright spots, the analysis showed plans often lacked detail, especially on how schools intended to respond to students with limited internet access, seek parent and community input, and target support to English learners, students in foster care and others likely to face the most earning disruption.

Vague descriptions of goals make it “hard for folks to follow up, so at the end of the school year, they can ask, ‘How did it go?’” said Atasi Uppal, an attorney focusing on juvenile justice and education at the firm. “We want to give some grace to districts that were planning last September, but we also just think they can do better.”

As districts in the state begin to develop plans for a combined $55 billion in state and one-time federal funds, the groups are calling for greater input from the public and offer a list of questions parents and others can use to seek details on programs and expenditures.

Roza and other school finance experts warn districts against using time-limited funds on raises, new staff and other recurring costs. But Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, one of the other California groups, added that schools in the state already have such large shortages of school counselors and nurses that it might be wise to increase staff. “There is a need for a lot of extra support now,” he said.

However, districts planning to hire may struggle to find enough qualified applicants, Aldeman said, based on labor market data showing districts have more job openings than they’re able to fill.

In Colorado, the Denver Public Schools tried to get a jump on the planning process by meeting with a budget advisory committee in December, even before the Biden administration took office and the relief bill passed. Those meetings — involving students, parents and union representatives — inspired a new $3 million to provide on-site mental health professionals at schools.

Chuck Carpenter, the district’s chief financial officer, said schools want to have “the most welcoming and ready environments” when students return in the fall. But the challenge is to avoid committing to new programs they won’t be able to sustain financially in the future. “It’s a grant and you have to treat it like that,” he said. “There will be a time when it’s not there.”

Meanwhile, not all states will meet the deadline to allocate funds to the local level. One possible complication is that they are holding onto the money at the state level as part of their annual budget process. And in some states, the legislature doesn’t approve the budget until the end of June. “If that’s the case, then generally those funds can’t leave the state treasury to be liquidated … until the state’s budget has been enacted,” explained Austin Reid, education committee director at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, some states have alerted the department that they will miss Monday’s deadline as well as the June 7 deadline to submit a state plan for using relief funds. A department spokesperson did not offer specifics, but said, “states are providing updates on a regular basis.”