Fellowship Program

Challenge West Virginia fellows are school community leaders who meet monthly in workshops designed to enhance their skills so that they become more effective in developing school activities and education strategies in their communities. This group is the core of a statewide network of education activists who, through interaction and sharing, are helping define education issues and developing action strategies and platforms around educational policy issues.

The Challenge West Virginia Education Forum

The Challenge West Virginia Forum provides an opportunity for motivated school community leaders from across the state to come together to examine issues and use their collective power to address key policy initiatives of importance to community schools. The Forum meets quarterly to identify key issues and to approve strategies to address those issues.

Conferences and Academies

Challenge West Virginia will join with other organizations to sponsor annual education academies and to acquaint a large and diverse audience in West Virginia with the potential value of small community schools and to provide an opportunity for interaction between Challenge West Virginia members and mainstream education organizations.

The study: The Story of the Politics of Education in West Virginia

Challenge West Virginia's 100-page study, The Story of the Politics of Education in West Virginia, examines recent education history in West Virginia, where conditions in public schools resulted in a court decision ordering the restructuring of school finance so that all the state's children could receive the same educational opportunities. This study explores the intersection of political interests with state education and tax policy and the resulting inability of the state to truly reform public schools.

To order a copy, please send a check or money order for $20 (which includes postage and handling) to Covenant House, 600 Shrewsbury Street, Charleston, WV 25301-1211.