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CHARLESTON -- The COVID-19 pandemic has infiltrated every level of education in West Virginia since it first crept into the Mountain State last spring, and officials at every level say the quest continues to improve the learning process and the access to it.
A panel of officials overseeing K-12 education, community and technical colleges and four-year colleges met virtually with members of West Virginia media Wednesday during the West Virginia Press Association's annual Legislative Lookahead. The group discussed what the pandemic has done to primary and secondary education, as well as colleges and trade schools.
The panel included Higher Education Policy Commission Chancellor Sarah Tucker; State Department of Education Superintendent Clayton Burch; Fairmont State University President Mirta Martin; and Bonny Copenhaver, president of New River Community and Technical College.
After schools in West Virginia closed March 13, 2020, Burch said the state's primary concerns turned not just to keeping students engaged in learning, but to their basic needs as well.
Before the pandemic, the state served about 500,000 meals in the summer of 2019. In the summer of 2020, it served 8 million. By last December, the state served 27 million meals to K-12 students.
With school buildings closed, counties turned to remote learning. Burch said that put a bigger spotlight on the "haves" and "have nots." Some students did not have access to broadband internet due to numerous issues, including not having service where they lived or being able to afford it. The impact of that has been seen not just in students' grades, but also their mental health.
Burch said that led to a renewed sense of what the public education system means to West Virginia.
"There is absolutely no substitution for a teacher in the lives of a child," he said "There's no substitution for what that school means to the community and the families, not just for academics, but for that social, emotional, physical well-being."
West Virginia has received more than $400 million in CARES Act funds to allow officials to target everything from pandemic learning loss to broadband to improving schools' HVAC systems. Burch said the state will distribute $33 million from the CARES Act for summer school programs, making up for the lost time in the classroom. Transportation and meals will be included in those funds as well, he said.
The pandemic also hurt students' ability to move to post-secondary education. Prior to COVID-19, only 50.5 percent of West Virginia's seniors moved on to college, compared to 69 percent nationwide. Tucker said that rate was unacceptable and has worked with Burch to create pathways for students from high school into a community college, university, or trade school.
Yet during the pandemic, Tucker said that, despite getting $104 million annually for student financial aid programs from the legislature, Promise Scholarship applications fell by 50 percent. Applications for federal student aid fell by 25 percent this year. Among the reasons, Tucker said, is that students are not receiving the same type of college counseling as they were before the pandemic.
"The students that we're losing right now in this pandemic are the students that we cannot afford to lose," Tucker said. "They're the students that can't afford to go to college without filling out the (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).
"They're the students that can't afford to go to college without West Virginia investing … without Promise. Those are the students that aren't getting the information that they need."