W.Va. Association of School Administrators

2008 Legislative Priorities

WVASA's membership committee has finalized the following
priorities for the W.Va. Legislature's 2008 regular session:

Priority One:
The current school aid formula is inadequate to meet the needs of county school districts to support the educational programs essential to provide 21st Century Skills to all students. We support changes in the formula to provide equitable resources to all counties to support high quality programs for all students. We support basing the allocation of state funds on net rather than adjusted enrollment figures.

Priority Two:
Teacher shortages in critical certification areas are reducing the ability of county school systems to provide full certified and qualified instructors for West virginia students. We support the establishment of alternative certification programs and increased teacher salaries as beginning efforts to solve the teacher shortage.

Priority Three:
The current law regarding the school calendar is very restrictive. We support a more flexible calendar to allow counties to vary the beginning and ending dates of the school year aqnd the ability to decide when makeup days are to be scheduled. We further support the addition of days for staff development to train teachers to meet the needs of the highly demanding 21st Century Initiative of the State Board of Education.

Endorsements:
We endorse and support Legislation to enable the School Building Authority to sell bonds and provide a higher level of funding with which to improve the school facilities across the State of West Virginia.

We endorse and support two goals regarding the funding of RESAs in the State of West Virginia. RESAs provide a valuable resource and support to all county school systems who take advantage of their services. Funding for RESAs is set in law at 0.6% of the Sttate Total of Step 5 of the Funding Formula. Re ently this amount has not been fully funded, but capped at $4.2 Million. We support eliminating the cap.

One of the most valuable services provided by RESAs is computer repair and maintenance. The cost of providing this service has risen due to rising salaries in all education positions in the state. The amount of funds provided to RESAs has not kept up with increasing costs and the number of technicians has had to be reduced. We support increasing the funding for computer repair and maintenance.

*Questions, comments, and suggestions relating to the above recommendations can be directed to WVASA Executive Director Martha Dean at mdean@wvasa.org.