“The ruling on the Hope Scholarship is very upsetting. Our family was approved to use the Hope Scholarship to put my son and daughter in private school. My son has ADHD and is on the gifted scale. The schools here in Berkeley County do not have any programs that can help him or accelerate his learning. Also the class sizes are way too large for my son to even be able to truly learn. Some of the classes have more than 30 students in them, and they aren’t even able to do small groups. This combined with my son’s ADHD was leading to him being bored and frustrated every day. He frequently comes home angry.

When we were looking for a different school for my kids, the private school in question allowed them to come in and attend their school for a day. They got to spend the day like a student there so they could see what it would be like to attend. This is the one and only day all last year my son came out of school with a smile on his face.

Because of the injunction we will not be able to move forward with the education that he needs and will also lose money since we will have to pay $500 to unenroll our children from their private school. The Hope scholarship was going to allow us the financial flexibility we needed to afford the private school that would help my kids, especially my son.

My understanding is that the ruling is based on the thought that West Virginia is required to supply a free education. The Hope Scholarship still does that and public schools will still be available. Also there are people saying that the scholarship will take taxpayers’ money away from the public school system. As a taxpayer myself shouldn’t I be able to have a say in how that money is spent and benefit from where my tax dollars go?

In the ruling, the judge also said, “In my view, the plaintiffs and the public school system will suffer irreparable harm if the scholarship program and the legislation establishing it are not enjoined from being implemented.” Well, my son is going to suffer irreparable harm because he will not receive the educational services he needs from Berkeley County Public schools. Not only are the teachers not certified (they are only required to have a bachelor’s degree of any kind and I don’t even know how that qualifies them to teach children) but there are no accelerated programs for gifted students. This ruling is a real blow to my children’s education!”