May 3—CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Professional Charter School Board has received the green light from the federal government to accept grant applications from charter schools across the state.
The U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday approved the board’s Request for Applications (RFA) for funding for the Charter Schools Program (CSP).
Board Executive Director James Paul said the grants will help improve and open more charter schools in West Virginia.
“The RFA is intended for new charter schools or existing charter schools hoping to expand their operations,” Paul said. “What we are prepared to do and what we plan to do this fiscal year is to offer two sub-grants: one for a school that is not yet open and one for a school that wants to expand.”
Applications from eligible schools will be collected soon, according to board deputy director Dusty Hurley.
“I expect that we will probably be releasing the RFAs within the next week to two weeks at the latest so that potential grant applicants can look at that. About two weeks after that, the grant application period would open and four weeks after that it would close,” Hurley said.
Hurley said the board plans to use some of the grant funding to provide technical assistance to charter schools for training and recruitment.
“We will also be looking for a technical assistance contractor to help us recruit charter schools so that we have a great pipeline of charter schools that know West Virginia as a place to open charter schools and also draw from maybe even local interested individuals who may are interested I’m thinking about a charter school so we will have new applicants,” she said.
Hurley said they also want to train school boards so they can run their boards more effectively.
West Virginia passed a state law in 2019 allowing charter schools.
