AFP-WV Key Vote Alert: Oppose House Finance Originating Bill Regarding Hope Scholarship

Feb 18, 2026 by AFP

Dear Lawmaker,

On behalf of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia and our activists across the state, I urge you to OPPOSE House Finance Originating Bill Regarding the Hope Scholarship. This vote may be recorded in our 2026 session legislative scorecard.

Prior to 2021, West Virginia was a frustrating outlier when it came to school choice options. Realizing the state was severely behind the times, principled lawmakers took bold action on behalf of students, parents, and educators to remedy the substantial lack of educational freedom in the Mountain State by enacting the Hope Scholarship.

This groundbreaking policy victory empowered parents like never before by ensuring every child has access to the right education for them, regardless of income or ZIP code. Hope also ushered in a wave of more than a dozen states following West Virginia’s example by enacting similar programs. By giving parents their tax dollars back to find the education that best suits their children’s unique needs, the Hope Scholarship turned West Virginia into a national leader in educational innovation overnight, took the state from last to top five in the nation for school choice options, and made educational freedom a litmus test issue for Conservative policymakers.

The House Finance Originating Bill Regarding the Hope Scholarship would wantonly and intentionally take West Virginia backwards. It represents nothing more than an attempt, by politicians who arrogantly think they know better than parents, to kick families out of school choice, limit education options, and slowly shutter the program. Nearly all the provisions in this legislation are designed to hurt families and students by taking away the flexibility they deserve and currently have in law. We oppose all provisions of this legislation and urge its swift defeat.

This Bill Takes Away Hope Parent’s Purchasing Power

As one of the individuals who helped write the original Hope Scholarship bill, I can attest to the intentionality of the funding mechanism currently used in code. Each Hope student receives 100% of the statewide net state school aid funding average. This ensures that the Hope Scholarship is inflation adjusted and works in parity with the amount of funding the state, on average, provides to the government-run school system per pupil through state aid. Putting an arbitrary cap on the amount Hope recipients receive is simply a way to slowly, but surely, kick families out of the program by making it no longer viable from a purchasing power standpoint.

The average rate of inflation is around 3%, eroding the purchasing power of Hope families. Here’s how much purchasing power $5,000 would have (in today’s dollars) after each timeframe, along with the loss:

After 5 years — Purchasing power: ≈ $4,313 Decrease: ≈ $687 (or about 13.7% loss)
After 10 years — Purchasing power: ≈ $3,720 Decrease: ≈ $1,280 (or about 25.6% loss)
After 15 years — Purchasing power: ≈ $3,209 Decrease: ≈ $1,791 (or about 35.8% loss)
After 20 years — Purchasing power: ≈ $2,768 Decrease: ≈ $2,232 (or about 44.6% loss)

This Bill Takes Away Flexibility and Futureproofing of Services

Hope was designed with the future in mind. While setting clear guardrails for what eligible expenses are, the current Hope law provides for educational innovations well into the future by allowing the Hope Scholarship Board to approve eligible expenses in line with those guardrails without a code change. The originating bill destroys that cutting-edge flexibility by taking away the board’s ability to approve new, emerging ways of learning, leaving our kids in the past.

The Hope Scholarship Board should be commended for their work to provide families new ways of learning while successfully preventing any waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, this legislation hamstrings the board and, ultimately, our kids from keeping up with the rapidly shifting education product landscape. The legislation also eliminates common-sense qualified expenses like tutoring, fees for advance placement exams, and fees for college prep exams, to name a few. Under this bill, every time a new quality learning option becomes available, families cannot access it until the legislature passes a law saying they can.

This Bill Immediately Kicks All Special Needs Students Out of Hope

The legislation requires standardized testing requirements that will preclude special needs students from being eligible for the program, deliberately kicking all special needs students out of this revolutionary school choice option. This is not only cruel but entirely unnecessary.

Current law already mandates that Hope families must either take a nationally normed standardized achievement test or have a certified teacher conduct a review of the student’s academic work annually to determine that the student is making academic progress commensurate with his or her age and ability.

Don’t Take West Virginia Students Backwards

Contrary to what liberal opponents of school choice may say, the Hope Scholarship remains one of the most innovative yet thoughtfully crafted Education Savings Account programs in the nation. It has fundamentally changed the lives of tens of thousands of families. But this legislation will take all that away from parents, students, and educators. It is a blatant attack on school choice and should be soundly rejected. Families deserve more freedom, not more government control.

It is for these reasons that I strongly urge you vote NO in opposition to House Finance Originating Bill Regarding the Hope Scholarship. As always, Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia will celebrate educational freedom champions and hold lawmakers accountable who undermine the educational flexibility families deserve.

Sincerely,

Jason Huffman

West Virginia State Director

Americans for Prosperity