Deputy State Director @AFPWV, Bodybuilding, Fishing, James 1:27
Charleston, WV
Joined February 2021
- Tweets492
- Following441
- Followers248
- Likes284
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Yes - transparency. I doubt any other government program has this level of detail. You can see exactly how dollars are spent.
Here's the latest Hope Scholarship report from the West Virginia Treasurer's Office ~ it's a thorough report (as someone who reads a lot of government reports)
hopescholarshipwv.gov/Portal…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
While we disagree with the environmental left’s rhetoric, there’s one thing we should agree on: they have a right to say it.
Government has no prevailing interest in leveraging state-led investigations to put a thumb on the scale of a fight over policy or politics.
The freedom of speech and of peaceful assembly are sacrosanct. And actions by government that, however well-meaning, chill free speech are antithetical to those unalienable rights.
The principled approach to pushing back against speech with which we disagree is more speech, not less.
Attorney General J.B. McCuskey’s office issued an investigatory subpoena to West Virginia Rivers Coalition for a decade of records on climate claims, internal deliberations, fundraising and partnerships.
buff.ly/qFBIyAv
Thanks for having me on to talk about our report @TomRoten
West Virginia public school enrollment has a decline of more than 8,200 students since last year.
@_Gally8 from @AFPWV discusses reasons and solutions in this podcast: tomrotenshow.com/podcast/epi…
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the links you send share the accounts you send it from, including your burners.
And I wish I could unsee some of y’alls 😬 – at Arlington, VA
Matt Gallagher retweeted
One thing the State Board of Education did not include in their proposal is the cost. Taxpayers deserve to know what’s being asked of them by @WVEducation.
Especially when WV is already spending record amounts on government-run education.
West Virginia's school funding formula needs reform. But @WVEducation's proposed overhaul is a step backward: more complexity, less local flexibility, and no fiscal estimate. Let's go back to the drawing board and build a formula that puts students first
wvgazettemail.com/opinion/op…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
“Education dollars should follow each child, with sensible adjustments for kids who cost more to educate. And, of course, it should come at a price the state can sustain.”
@james_d_paul is exactly right, here!
West Virginia's school funding formula needs reform. But @WVEducation's proposed overhaul is a step backward: more complexity, less local flexibility, and no fiscal estimate. Let's go back to the drawing board and build a formula that puts students first
wvgazettemail.com/opinion/op…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
West Virginia's school funding formula needs reform. But @WVEducation's proposed overhaul is a step backward: more complexity, less local flexibility, and no fiscal estimate. Let's go back to the drawing board and build a formula that puts students first
wvgazettemail.com/opinion/op…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
To be clear, West Virginians voted Delegate Criss out of office. @AFPWV just made sure the voters knew where he stood on school choice—a true litmus test for republicans in the Mountain State.
From showing up in the statehouse and making their voices heard, to canvassing for principled policy champions who ousted politicians who’ve lost their way, proud to see the work of @AFPWV activists from across the state making headlines yet again.
New: A high-ranking Republican tried to curb the unchecked growth of West Virginia’s school voucher program. Then three PACs — bankrolled by pro-school choice billionaires like the Koch family and Jeffrey Yass — worked to take him down. propub.li/3TPiyIq
Matt Gallagher retweeted
NEW: This Republican tried to cap the Hope Scholarship. Out-of-state billionaires helped bankroll efforts to replace him.
mountainstatespotlight.org/2…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Useful work by @AFPWV compiling school building utilization for every county. Data like this should be published routinely by the state, not obtained through FOIA. It should inform hard decisions on closures, consolidation, the funding formula, etc.
NEW REPORT: West Virginia’s public school buildings are only about 55% full. 🏫
Using county-level data obtained through a FOIA request, AFP-WV found that the state has about 416,000 seats for roughly 230,000 enrolled students. That’s 1.8 seats for every student.
Meanwhile, total public school funding rose 16% in just two years, a $663 million increase.
As the debate over the school funding formula heats up heading into the 2027 Legislative Session, lawmakers should fund students, not systems, and ensure parents direct every dollar.
👉 Read the full report: bit.ly/4dySiIY
New AFP report - 55% school utilization rate across the state.
You can't spend your way out of a demographic problem with 60,000 fewer children in schools now than in 2000.
The current system was built for a school population the state doesn't have, and may not again.
And this problem has nothing to do with the Hope Scholarship.
Randolph County lost 552 students between 2017–18 and 2024–25. Of that decline, 417 had already happened before Hope began. That's roughly three-quarters. Blaming Hope doesn't explain a problem that was already there. Hope has ~43 users in Randolph Co.
But those buildings still have to be heated, maintained, and repaired. Fewer students doesn't mean those costs just disappear.
That money has to come from somewhere.
When we're spending it to maintain space we aren't fully using, we can't spend it on something else. Teachers. Tutoring. The things that could actually improve education for the kids in those schools. (WV is still nearly last in ed.)
Heating a half-empty building and hiring a reading specialist both cost money. The question is which use does more for students. Keeping a building open isn't free just because we're already doing it.
Consolidation is not ideal. No one wants kids on the bus for extended periods of time. It's not good for them.
That also doesn't mean a school with a 25% utilization rate should be kept open at any cost.
Keeping underused school buildings open ties up money that could better serve the students we have. Our education budget should reflect today's students, not yesterday's population. – at Rand, WV
NEW REPORT: West Virginia’s public school buildings are only about 55% full. 🏫
Using county-level data obtained through a FOIA request, AFP-WV found that the state has about 416,000 seats for roughly 230,000 enrolled students. That’s 1.8 seats for every student.
Meanwhile, total public school funding rose 16% in just two years, a $663 million increase.
As the debate over the school funding formula heats up heading into the 2027 Legislative Session, lawmakers should fund students, not systems, and ensure parents direct every dollar.
👉 Read the full report: bit.ly/4dySiIY
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Enrollment is down across the nation, not just in the Mountain State. On average, our school buildings sit half-empty. Meanwhile, West Virginia taxpayers are spending more on public schools, and for fewer students, than ever before.
Despite the siren song of the tax-and-spend left, simply spending more on government-run education will do nothing to fix the inherent flaws in our school funding formula or help our kids succeed. State lawmakers should swiftly take bold action to fund students, not systems while ensuring parents direct every dollar.
NEW REPORT: West Virginia’s public school buildings are only about 55% full. 🏫
Using county-level data obtained through a FOIA request, AFP-WV found that the state has about 416,000 seats for roughly 230,000 enrolled students. That’s 1.8 seats for every student.
Meanwhile, total public school funding rose 16% in just two years, a $663 million increase.
As the debate over the school funding formula heats up heading into the 2027 Legislative Session, lawmakers should fund students, not systems, and ensure parents direct every dollar.
👉 Read the full report: bit.ly/4dySiIY
Matt Gallagher retweeted
You know Gell-Mann Amnesia? The phenomenon where you see newspapers being wrong in your area but you believe them in areas you're not an expert?
It's awkward because that is how people are. A doctor probably does know a lot about biology and very little about philosophy!
So?
Matt Gallagher retweeted
With all due respect to Catholic friends, the statement below is a challenge to its own moral tradition. They dispute this, of course, with a bunch of defenses that strain credulity. It is important to keep stating the obvious: Different Popes make competing statements on the morality of capital punishment. The view expressed below is not the historic position held in the Catholic tradition. And since it is October, it is also an occasion to remind that Scripture is the ultimate authority in matters such as this, not the vacillating opinions of individual Popes.
The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Federal permitting reform represents a HISTORIC opportunity to turn West Virginia's energy advantage into MORE jobs, a BETTER economy, and STRONGER communities.
Congress should follow @SenCapito's bold leadership by adopting this LANDMARK legislation!
Let's get Washington out of the way so we can build West Virginia's future.
CC: @AFPWV, @AFPhq, @AFPGovAffairs
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Deeply appreciate the steadfast leadership of @SenCapito in shepherding through an agreement on permitting reform legislation.
If enacted, it will make huge strides toward unleashing American energy abundance and driving down costs for families.
Years in the making! Let’s get it done!
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Yann LeCun, Executive Chairman of AMI Labs, explains why LLMs are mostly retrieving human knowledge rather than thinking for themselves:
LeCun starts with why so many people misread what these systems are doing:
"I think there's a lot of confusion, really, because we tend to anthropomorphize systems that can reproduce certain human functions."
When an AI writes fluent answers, we assume there's a mind behind them. LeCun's view is that most of what we're seeing is something more familiar:
"LLMs, to some extent, except for a few domains, are mostly information retrieval systems. They can compress a lot of factual knowledge that has been previously produced by humans and can give easy access to it."
The key words are "previously produced by humans."
The knowledge in an LLM came from people. What the system adds is compression and easy access.
That puts LLMs in a long historical line:
"In a way, it's kind of a natural evolution of the printing press, the libraries, the Internet, and search engines. Right. It's just a more efficient way to access information."
@ylecun is clear about their value:
"LLMs are incredibly useful, there's no question about that. And they do amplify human intelligence, like computer technology going back to the 1940s."
He also allows that in a few areas, such as generating code and some types of mathematics, the capabilities seem to go beyond retrieval. But he notes what those areas share:
"It's still, to a large extent, domains where reasoning has to do with manipulating symbols."
That's where the retrieval framing shows its limits. If these systems were truly thinking for themselves, you'd expect that ability to carry over into the physical world. It hasn't:
"The problem is that why do we have systems that can pass the bar exam and win mathematics Olympiads, but we don't have domestic robots, we don't even have self driving cars."
Then comes his sharpest comparison:
"And we certainly do not have self driving cars that can teach themselves to drive in 20 hours of practice like any 17 year old. So we're missing something big still."
Matt Gallagher retweeted
Here is the latest Greenbrier Street Brief article, on a subject I care deeply about: Let’s count the words we give students to read greenbrierstreetbrief.substa…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
I don’t know about Life Surge but I do know who Tim Tebow is and what Christianity is. To have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ doesn’t cost money but requires faith. Tim Tebow is a reflection of Jesus in every way. I had the pleasure of interviewing him a year ago.
EDITORIAL: Turns out, televangelism isn't the only way one can fleece the vulnerable of every penny they have.
wvgazettemail.com/opinion/ed…
Matt Gallagher retweeted
A West Virginia non-profit hospital system: $0 taxes, protected from competition, discounted drugs through 340B, commercial markups and facility fees, and public dollars that multiply through a federal match—all while it buys up independent rural providers and closes service lines.
What do patients get back? Less than a penny on the dollar in free or reduced care and a health care market that's more expensive, harder to access, and doesn't work for them.
