MARTINSBURG – In recent days, absentee Governor Jim Justice has publicly attacked Senate President Mitch Carmichael and the GOP Senate for leading the charge on comprehensive education reform in our state.
In fact, our broken school system ranks 49th nationally in SAT scores, and NAEP scores 46th in fifth-grade math, 45th in eighth-grade reading. Eighty-eight percent “do not meet” West Virgina’s own math standards, 90 percent of West Virginia’s high schools “do not meet” or only “partially meet” our state’s own reading standards, while taxpayer spending is $12,613 per student for a grand total spent of over $3.1 billion of a $4.6 billion state budget.
Jim Justice and the teacher union bosses believe everything is fine – nothing could be further from the truth! Our Student Success Act will improve student performance, increase choices for parents, increase local control and provide millions of dollars into local schools and to classroom teachers.
Blair
All of this while our Deadbeat Billionaire Governor is in-and-out of local, state and federal courts nearly every day for not paying bills, not living in the seat of government, not paying fines for thousands of worker safety violations … and the list goes on and on.
For months, everyone has been talking about it, but now I am clearly and loudly saying it: Jim Justice is an embarrassment to our state and should resign and try to attend to his family business obligations.
Our state deserves a leader who will improve our schools, fix our roads and work with President Trump’s administration to grow our state’s economy.
Blair is a Republican state senator from Berkeley County representing West Virginia’s 15th District in the Eastern Panhandle. He is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. This opinion piece originally appeared in the Martinsburg Journal.