NOTE: I’ve decided to republish this piece because it sets the stage for a podcast recording that will be released on Friday, July 17, 2026. This article has not been updated since its original October 2025, publication date.
I know you don’t have time for this. You’re working full-time, shuttling kids to activities, doing homework help at 9 PM, and trying to figure out what the hell a “Hope Scholarship” even is because your neighbor mentioned it at the bus stop and you nodded like you knew.
I get it. I’m doing it too.
I’m a single-parent with two kids in West Virginia public schools. I work full-time. I have a college degree in public policy analysis and 15+ years of government experience, which is a fancy way of saying I can read policy briefs without falling asleep and I know when politicians are lying.
In the video below, State Board of Education President Paul Hardesty perfectly illustrated what policy analysts call asymmetric regulation. It’s a classic managed-decline strategy. You don’t actively destroy your target—you just rig the game so it can’t possibly compete. Impose crushing compliance costs on one player while letting competitors operate with zero constraints.
The Funding Trap: Policy Malpractice 101
Let me put on my nerd glasses and explain the con at the heart of this whole scheme.
West Virginia funds schools through the Public School Support Plan (PSSP)—an enrollment-based model. Simple concept: money follows students. Enrollment up? Funding up. Enrollment down? Funding down.
Sounds fair, right?
Here’s the trap: This only works if costs are variable. If expenses scale directly with student numbers, enrollment-based funding makes perfect sense.
But most school costs are fixed, not variable.
Let’s break down what school districts actually pay for:
* Infrastructure: Buildings, maintenance, utilities (fixed)
* Transportation: Buses, routes, drivers—especially in rural areas where you can’t just cancel a 40-mile route because three kids left (fixed)
* Administration: Principals, superintendents, support staff (fixed)
* Debt service: Bond payments on capital projects (fixed)
Only a slice of costs—mainly teacher salaries and instructional materials—actually vary with enrollment.
So when a school loses students, it loses proportional funding but cannot reduce its fixed costs proportionally. The result? A structural deficit that can only be “solved” by cutting teachers and programs or closing schools entirely.
This is what we call policy malpractice. Any competent first-year policy student would flag this model as unsustainable.
The legislature knows this. They’ve been told. Repeatedly. By the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy and others. They’ve done nothing to fix it.
* West Virginia Must Modernize School Funding Formula to Prioritize Community Schools and Student Needs
* Tracking Public School Closures in WV
* The Perfect Storm: Limited Oversight and Accountability Contribute to Growing Costs of the Hope Scholarship
The ALEC Playbook: Starve the Beast
When President Hardesty named ALEC—the American Legislative Exchange Council—as the architect of West Virginia’s school choice strategy, I wasn’t even slightly surprised. I’ve tracked ALEC’s model legislation for years.
When he said, “If you bankrupt the school system, change can occur,” he was describing a strategy ALEC has deployed across multiple states. It’s called “starve the beast.”
Here’s the playbook:
Step 1: Create alternatives (charters, vouchers, ESAs) that siphon students and funding from public schools.
Step 2: Maintain crushing regulations on public schools while exempting alternatives, ensuring public schools can’t compete.
Step 3: Underfund the public system while pointing to “declining enrollment” as justification, manufacturing a fiscal crisis.
Step 4: Point to the crisis as “proof” that public schools are “failing” and must be replaced with privatized alternatives.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it’s devastatingly effective.
The Competitive Rigging I See Every Single Day
Here’s where my policy and mom brain really start screaming at each other.
As policy analyst, I can explain regulatory capture and asymmetric compliance burdens. As a mom, I live the consequences.
My son’s elementary school principal spends hours every week on compliance paperwork:
* Special education documentation
* Teacher evaluation protocols
* Attendance reporting
* Nutrition program requirements
* Safety drills
The list is endless.
Meanwhile, the charter school that opened last year? “Exempt from many regulatory constraints.” They hire and fire at will. Set their own curriculum. Establish enrollment “preferences” that—surprise, surprise—let them cherry-pick students.
This is textbook competitive disadvantage imposed by regulation. And it’s deliberate.
The legislature could have:
* Reduced regulatory burden on public schools when they created charter alternatives
* Applied equal accountability standards to all schools
* Leveled the playing field
They did none of that. Because fair competition was never the goal. Managed decline was always the plan.
The Numbers They Hope You Won’t Notice
Let me show you what the data actually reveals—because this is where policy expertise becomes most valuable.
State Funding Trends (inflation-adjusted):
* FY 2009 baseline: 100%
* FY 2026: 83% (down 17%)
Enrollment Trends:
* 2009-2026: Down 14.7%
See the problem? The funding decline (17%) exceeds the enrollment decline (14.7%). That means per-pupil funding is actually decreasing, not just total funding.
Per-Pupil Spending (2023):
* West Virginia: $14,575
* National average: $16,526
* Difference: -$1,951 per student
* Regional ranking: Dead last among all neighboring states.
Now here’s the question any policy analyst has to ask: Is this because West Virginia is poor? Can’t afford education investment?
Nope. West Virginia has run budget surpluses in recent years. The state has money.
The legislature is choosing to underfund public education while simultaneously pumping $245 million into programs designed to drain students from those schools.
This is a policy choice, not fiscal necessity.
MY KIDS: Why This Isn’t Academic For Me
I need to tell you about my kids, because this isn’t abstract policy analysis for me. This is my family’s future.
My oldest started kindergarten in Fall 2013. They’re graduating high school in Spring 2026. That means they’ve watched West Virginia public education transform from 2013 to 2026—the entire arc of their K-12 experience.
They’ve spent their middle school and high school years watching programs shrink, teachers leave, class sizes grow, and opportunities disappear as funding gets diverted to subsidize private school tuition for families who already had money.
My fourth-grader has ADHD and a high IQ. They’re in the gifted program, which provides exactly the kind of specialized, individualized support that makes the difference between a kid who thrives and a kid who struggles. I am terrified that program will be cut.
Because here’s what happens when $52 million gets diverted from public schools: specialized programs disappear first. Gifted programs. Advanced courses. Arts. Music. The “extras” that aren’t actually extras—they’re what makes education work for kids whose brains work differently.
Private schools don’t have to replicate these services. They don’t have to accept kids with IEPs. They don’t have to provide the same level of special education support. They can be selective in ways public schools legally cannot.
So when families with resources leave public schools via Hope Scholarships, the students who remain—the ones who need the most support, the ones with learning differences, the ones whose families can’t afford alternatives—get fewer services with less funding.
My fourth-grader, who needs that gifted program? They’re not going anywhere. We can’t afford private school even with a $4,921 subsidy. I can’t homeschool because I work full-time. We’re staying in public school.
And that public school is getting gutted to fund scholarships for other people’s kids.
Tell me how that’s fair. Tell me how that’s “choice.” Tell me how that helps my child.
I’ll wait.
The Money Behind the Machine: Koch Cash and Dark Money Pipelines
Here’s where we follow the money—because understanding who’s funding this dismantling matters.
Behind the deliberate strategy to bankrupt public education sit powerful organizations operating in close coordination:
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
The model legislation factory. They write the bills, lawmakers copy-paste them into state law.
Americans for Prosperity West Virginia (AFP-WV)
The ground-level mobilization arm. They organize, lobby, and campaign for the policies ALEC designs.
Both are funded extensively by Koch family foundations—Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch Charitable Foundations among others. These foundations channel millions through donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which serve as dark-money conduits for politically aligned campaigns supporting both ALEC and AFP.
The Stand Together network acts as an umbrella funneling resources to grassroots advocacy and model legislation strategies. This funding supports lobbying, organizing, and promoting school choice legislation that siphons money from public schools to privatized alternatives.
AFP-WV operates as the key state-level mobilizer, campaigning for education policies aligned with ALEC’s model legislation while obscuring funding sources and coordination.
This isn’t conspiracy theory. It’s documented funding flows and organizational relationships. The question isn’t whether this network exists—it’s why more people aren’t talking about it.
The Constitutional Violation Nobody’s Prosecuting
West Virginia Constitution, Article XII, Section 1: “The Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.“
Current reality:
* Thorough? 53 schools closed, 25 more closing, programs gutted
* Efficient? Spending $52 million to help 2.2% of students while defunding schools for the other 97.8%
* Free? Hope Scholarship covers 27-32% of actual private school costs
As a policy analyst, I’d argue this constitutes a violation of the state’s constitutional duty.
As a mom, I’d argue they’re breaking their promise to my kids.
The McDowell County Smoking Gun
Here’s the data that should end every “school choice helps poor kids” argument forever:
McDowell County (poorest in WV): ZERO Hope Scholarship recipients. Not one. Nada. Zilch.
Berkeley County (wealthy DC suburbs): 439 recipients
Just five affluent counties (Kanawha, Berkeley, Wood, Cabell, and Raleigh) captured 40% of all Hope scholarships. These same counties contain 30% of the state’s private schools.
My Battle Plan: What I’m Doing With This Knowledge
I’m in a unique position. I have policy expertise to understand exactly what’s happening and personal stakes to care deeply about stopping it.
So here’s my battle plan:
* Documenting Everything: Building a comprehensive dataset showing direct correlation between Hope Scholarship expansion and public school decline. Data doesn’t lie, even when politicians do.
* Translating Policy Into Plain Language: Most parents don’t have time to decode legislation and fiscal notes. But they need to understand what’s being done to their schools. So I’m writing, speaking, explaining.
* Organizing: Individual parents feel powerless. Organized parents are a political force. We need a coalition of parents, teachers, and community members who understand what’s at stake.
* Holding Legislators Accountable: Tracking votes, analyzing statements, calling out the gap between rhetoric and action. When legislators claim to support public education but vote to expand vouchers without fixing the funding formula, their constituents need to know.
The Frustrating Truth: This Is Completely Fixable
The legislature could:
* Reform the funding formula to account for fixed costs and provide stability grants to declining-enrollment districts
* Level the regulatory playing field by reducing burden on public schools OR increasing accountability for charters (pick one, cowards)
* Adequately fund public education at competitive regional levels
* Add guardrails to Hope Scholarship to control costs and prevent fiscal collapse
* Conduct comprehensive fiscal impact analysis of school choice policies on public school sustainability
These aren’t radical ideas. They’re basic good governance.
My mom heart knows they won’t do any of this unless we make them.
To Every Parent Who’s Too Tired to Fight (But Too Angry to Quit)
I know you don’t have time to analyze policy. You’re working, raising kids, trying to survive. I get it—I’m doing it too.
But here’s what you need to understand:
This isn’t incompetence. It’s not budget constraints. It’s not demographic destiny.
It’s a deliberate, coordinated, billionaire-funded campaign to destroy public education.
They’re betting you’re too busy to notice, too tired to fight, too overwhelmed to organize.
Prove them wrong.
Print these numbers. Make them explain how ZERO scholarships to McDowell County helps “poor kids.”
Ask uncomfortable questions: Why are we subsidizing families who already chose private school?
Share this everywhere. Make it viral. Make it uncomfortable. Make them answer for it.
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