Nearing a deadline to move bills from one chamber to another, a proposal to place a hold on removing students from public schools to homeschool environments if there is a pending child abuse or neglect investigation sent ripples through everything.
“Raylee’s Law” is named for an 8-year-old girl who died of abuse and neglect in 2018 after she was withdrawn from school, eliminating contact with educators under mandatory reporting requirements. That bill has been introduced since 2019, but has never passed.
This year, with the 60-day legislative session coming closer to the end, there is a full-court press.
In the Senate, Democrat Joey Garcia of Marion County attempted a discharge motion to pull the bill out of the health committee. The Senate majority voted to table his motion, thwarting the attempt.
That led Garcia to invoke a state constitutional option to have bills read aloud in their entirety. In short, that gums up the works and it’s a method to apply leverage.
“We can’t just give lip service. We can’t just get up and give a speech. We’ve got to do something about this, and that’s what we’re trying to make happen,” said Garcia, D-Marion. “If it saves one life, that’s enough. That’s enough for me.”
In the House of Delegates, supporters of Raylee’s Law managed to get a version of the bill onto the House Education Committee agenda today, which generally would have been past the point of a bill having any hope of passing on deadline.
Delegates on the House Education Committee debated the bill for about an hour before agreeing to pass it out. To do so, they suspended a House rule that typically requires having a bill discussed in a committee one day and up for passage the next. Chairman Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, also said he would ask to drop a second reference to Judiciary.
So Raylee’s Law remains viable, up against inertia of the Crossover Day deadline on Wednesday.
Raylee Browning’s father and two other adults were sentenced in 2023 to prison time in her death. The adults were accused of mistreating her and then ignoring her symptoms when she got sick before dying the day after Christmas in 2018. The cause of death was sepsis caused by a bacterial pneumonia infection.
After the House Education Committee meeting today, lead sponsor Shawn Fluharty said the legislation is worth all the effort.
“This is how government should work. This is a bipartisan, biproduct of work that has gone on for a number of years. We still have some procedural matters. My understanding is that we will, and for the first time we will get an up and down vote on Raylee’s Law on the House floor as a standalone bill,” said Fluharty, D-Ohio.
Fluharty said the education committee took up the bill after delegates had considered going a different route, which would have meant an attempt to amend the policy into another bill.
Speaking of House leaders, Fluharty said, “I believe the understanding was they would rather see this as a standalone bill than have it be part of another piece of legislation.
“The intent here is clear: It’s to protect children. So I’m glad to see we actually put the work in in a bipartisan manner through the committee structure and not just amendments.”
The effort did receive some pushback. In front of the education committee, the president of the West Virginia Home Educators Association told delegates the policy amounts to “gross overreach on parental choice.”
Roy Ramey suggested that some families go through a long, thoughtful, difficult process before deciding to pull their children out of public schools and then homeschool. In some cases, Ramey said, the students may be the target of bullying.
He envisioned a scenario where school personnel might raise concerns — perhaps baselessly — about a transfer to homeschool status, delaying such a move. He said tragedies reflect failures by child protective services, not a gap in homeschool regulations
“This bill has gross overreach on parental choice and the decisions that parents have on the direction of the education of their children,” he said.
In the Senate, a different coalition of lawmakers attempted to move that chamber’s version of Raylee’s Law to the floor.
Garcia said the proposal deserved a debate and that’s what led him to rise time after time to ask for bills to be read aloud. That turned the floor session, already long, into a slog.
“I really don’t like the idea of reading bills. It is a constitutional right that each senator does have, and it’s to be used only in the most extreme circumstances and this fits that for me. The fact that we couldn’t even get a debate — I couldn’t even get out why it’s important to have a discharge motion,” he told reporters during a break.
“If people want to vote it down, OK. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, but at least we have that debate and we hear that in the public as far as why is this a good bill or not a good bill — but to stifle that debate, I won’t accept that.”
Senate Education Chairwoman Amy Nichole Grady also supports the bill and wanted it to receive consideration. Grady, speaking to reporters, said the bill is important because it targets child abusers.
“It is just a protection measure for kids who are being abused,” said Grady, R-Mason.
“I’m a public school teacher also, and I see situations where kids are removed and we have no idea where they went. Some of them move out of state. CPS is supposed to continue investigations but guess what — they can’t find them sometimes if they move out of state.”
She continued, “We have parents rights and I’m all for that, but we also have the rights of the child. And we have to look out for the child and make sure their rights are protected as well.”
If the bill can just make it to the floor for all senators to vote on it, Grady thinks it has a good chance of passing.
“I really think if we get the bill to the floor that we have the support to pass it. I really do. I’ve done the numbers in my head. I think we have the votes to pass it. It’s just getting it to the floor for a vote.”