The following summary includes education-related proposals from the 2008 state of the state addresses. To assure that this information reaches you in a timely manner, minimal attention has been paid to style (capitalization, punctuation) or format. To view the documents, click on the blue triangle next to the state.
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 | West Virginia |
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| Governor Joe Manchin's State of the State Address
Accountability
-- Revoke the driver's licenses of students who are found to have committed serious offenses like assaulting a teacher or fellow student or bringing a dangerous weapon to school, and add a requirement that in order to obtain and keep a driver's license between the ages of 16 and 18, you must receive passing grades.
Drugs, Alcohol
-- Build upon the current success of Prevention Resource Officer Program, a cooperative effort between schools and law enforcement designed to put officers in schools to teach students about drug and safety issues and to recognize potential danger, prevent violence and respond to dangerous situations. Partner with local police and sheriff's departments to put Prevention Resource Officers in more schools in every county.
Economic/Workforce Development
-- Target higher education and work force development investments toward meeting the needs of the state's growing and emerging industries by creating "Bucks for Jobs." West Virginia must be a player in the 21st century world economy, and to do so we need to develop more intellectual and financial capital. "Bucks for Jobs" will achieve both these goals by leveraging smart, interconnected investments in economic development, higher education and work force training. A "Bucks for Brains" initiative, using one-time surplus monies, will create a $50 million endowment fund for our two research universities, WVU and Marshall, to stimulate world-class research and development and attract venture capital, which will eventually lead to jobs in emerging high-tech, high-wage industries. The state's investment will be matched, dollar for dollar, by private donations, resulting in sizable funds that will strengthen our most-promising research departments – ultimately leading to business spinoffs, new patents and job creation. Make sure that the money we're already spending on work force training is being accessed by the businesses that need it and that all businesses in our state know about "Training Bucks" and how to get them.
-- Make a major investment in the development of two state-of-the-art advanced technical centers. These centers will offer training that is specialized to meet the needs of existing businesses as well as those new businesses that we are now attracting to the state, and they will collaborate directly with industry to design and deliver high-quality instruction.
-- Invest in existing programs at community and technical colleges to fill the growing need for workers in allied health fields (from nurses to dental assistants, emergency medical technicians, pharmacy workers and surgery technicians). This investment will result in approximately 1,000 new allied health field graduates every year in West Virginia beginning in 2010.
-- Ask the Promise Scholarship board to develop a rule requiring recipients to work in West Virginia following graduation as a condition of not having to pay back the Promise Scholarship.
-- Add "payback" requirements for those new state employees who receive additional state-paid training, such as our State Police officers, pilots, engineers and others. Too often, we are spending state dollars to provide training for these new employees only to have them then leave us for other job opportunities outside of state government once their training is complete.
Health
-- Develop in our schools Kids First, a kindergarten health screening program. Through the use of administrative funds from the State Children's Health Insurance Program,
West Virginia will establish a health services initiative that is the first in the nation to ensure every uninsured child entering kindergarten has a wellness screening prior to starting school.
Teacher Compensation
-- Require all of our counties to use 100 percent of the extra School Aid Formula money for classroom teachers' salaries.
Safety/Student Discipline
-- Improve the environment that our classroom teachers currently work in and our children currently learn in. The 21st Century Jobs Cabinet has been asked to develop the "West Virginia Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for Learning." The Bill of Rights will set standards both for the rights and responsibilities of students while in school and the authority of teachers to protect those rights and enforce those responsibilities.
-- Go a step further with the state's requirement that districts have anti-bullying plans in place. Establish a commission to thoroughly review the anti-bullying practices of our schools and recommend the best ways to expand our efforts to identify and stop dangerous and bullying behavior before it becomes a threat, as well as how to best deal with disruptive students during the school day.
http://www.wvgov.org/SoS2008/ManchinSOS010908.pdf | |
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