CHARLESTON — After West Virginia secured a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education for $465 million in additional spending on education programs, Gov. Jim Justice said Tuesday that lawmakers will be redirecting funds cut from the budget. He said we need to focus on recovery. invoice.
Last week, the governor's office accused the Department of Education of failing to comply with rules set in place to keep the state's education spending at a certain level, instead of spending more than $1.1 billion on COVID-19 relief efforts. He announced that he had accepted the exemption for the second year in a row. funds.
“I can now say with certainty that I am excited to share that the U.S. Department of Education has accepted our request for a clawback waiver, meaning we will not have to return any federal funds,” he said Tuesday. The judge said this at the weekly administration briefing. From the National Diet Building. “We've done our job…and we've done it in a way that the federal government is happy with what we've done in terms of education. We've been supporting our kids, right?”
States received more than $1.1 billion in 2020-2021 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act. These funds were donated to school systems in all 55 counties.
The final rules established by each state to maintain eligibility to spend CRRSA and ARPA funds will require final guidance to be released in August 2022, requiring each state to maintain a certain average of total education spending compared to total budget spending. was required to be maintained. This percentage is based on the average of three fiscal years (2017, 2018, and 2019) before the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020.
West Virginia's baseline level of proportional education spending was 41.6%, but because each county's education spending was tied to the school aid system, the amount of state support for K-12 education in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 was below the required spending level. State officials were able to demonstrate increased education spending through other means, including teacher pay increases, increased funding for School Construction Authority projects, deferred maintenance of existing schools, and the Governor's School Communities Program.
But the Justice Department and state education and revenue officials have never publicly announced which waivers were originally approved and which have yet to be approved, and news of the second waiver application did not arrive until two weeks before the 2024 legislative session adjourned. Announced before. He noted that the proposed budget for fiscal year 2025, which begins in July, being considered by the House Finance Committee is smaller than the governor's proposed budget.
The House and Senate passed the budget, withholding any anticipated surplus until the state receives approval for a second waiver. Senate Budget No. 200 sets the General Fund budget at $4.996 billion for next year and makes several cuts, including Medicaid and the Intellectual Developmental Disabilities (IDD) Waiver Program.
Despite signing the bill, the justices were vocal about their dissatisfaction with how Congress watered down the budget and accused lawmakers of panicking over the exemption issue.
“I think we should always be careful, always be careful about the store, always be careful about our belongings, but if you run through a movie theater screaming, 'Fire,' that's the smart thing to do.” It makes no sense to think that way,” Justice said. “We covered this. We were absolutely sure it was covered and there was no reason to do so.”
The Justice Department will call lawmakers into a special session in May after the primary election, and will restore spending cuts in the budget surplus and make cuts to Medicaid and IDD waiver programs in time for the May midterm session of Congress. It is expected that the aim will be to restore the
“What we need to focus our efforts on from the get-go is to put the money we took out of the budget back into (the Department of Health and Human Services),” Justice said. “If we're not careful, we're going to really disrupt people who are really in need.”
Steven Allen Adams can be reached at adams@newsandsentinel.com.
