Written by: Tom Markland and published in The Martinsburg Journal on March 4, 2025, link to the article HERE.
Flanked by members of the Hedgesville Middle School Student Council, Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed a bill aimed at clearing the way for veterans of the armed forces to become teachers.
Senate Bill 765, also called the Troops to Teachers Act, amends two sections of the West Virginia State Code outlining teacher preparation pathways, including traditional and alternative certification routes, and specifies conditions for issuing professional teaching certifications, particularly for veterans who meet certain criteria.
For Morrisey, the goal of the bill is a way to address the state’s teacher shortage.
“We know that the most important thing for a child to succeed in school is a quality teacher in the classroom, but in far too many places around the state, we don’t have enough teachers to fulfill the community’s needs,” Morrisey said. “There’s a lot of things we can do to change that.”
He said getting rid of the bureaucracy lengthening the process for veterans to settle into teaching jobs is an important step for West Virginia to bring up its rock-bottom national education standings.
The bill follows the steps of a now-defunct federal program, the Pentagon’s Troops to Teachers program. It was shut down just last year due to declining participation. According to a study by the Government Accountability Office in 2023, the former program churned out 1,450 teachers in 2020, having fallen from 7,718 in 1994.
For state Sen. Tom Willis (R-15), the bill’s primary sponsor and a veteran himself, the bill combines his two passions — service and education. A Hedgesville native, Willis said he was happy to be back in the middle school his daughter attended.
“This Troops to Teachers Act creates a fast, fair and effective pathway for military veterans to become certified teachers in West Virginia,” Willis said.
“Bottom line, it cuts the red tape, which is what we’re always fighting for in the Legislature,” Willis added.
Willis argues that the veterans have an abundance of leadership skills and functional skills that would be valuable in the classroom.
Delegate Bill Ridenour (R-100), who’s been pushing a similar bill in the House of Delegates for years now, said a program like Troops to Teachers would’ve helped him when he retired from the United States Marine Corps in 2000 and was looking for a career.
“I was interested in teaching. I thought quite a bit about it,” Ridenour said. “I had three young children and a family, and my military pay had not really done a great deal to enhance our finances, so I was looking for a career, and I had heard about the Troops to Teachers as a federal program, but it had lapsed by then.”
The governor was also joined by two teachers at Hedgesville Middle School — Scott Budka, a special education teacher, and William Hubert, a science teacher. Both discussed how their military service makes them a better teacher.
“During my time in the United States Marine Corps, I learned how to teach, how to lead, how to develop plans and how to adapt those plans to changing situations,” Humbert said. “When I became a high school teacher, it was these experiences that made me a more effective educator and allowed me to pass on these skills to my students.”