State Board Of Education Approves More School Closings, Consolidations

The West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) has approved yet another round of difficult school closures and consolidations throughout the Mountain State. The measures come almost a year to the day after the last round of shut downs.

After conducting local impact statements, the WVBE approved the proposals at its meeting Wednesday. The list includes schools in Barbour, Logan, Randolph, Upshur, Wetzel and Roane Counties.

Before the board vote, there was a litany of pleas against the closures. Many of the objections came from Roane County residents, upset over the shutting down of rural Geary and Walton Elementary and Middle Schools. Former bus driver Keith Smith said parents would struggle to get their children to any new bus stop meeting points. 

“A lot of the parents out there don’t have cars,” Smith said. “And the ones that do, a lot of them have to go to work. If you shut down those schools it would take me two and a half hours to get those kids in, from out in places like Big Pigeon or Granny’s Creek.”

Roane County teacher Tiffany Raines spoke on the academic effects of long school travel.

“Children deserve to attend school close to home,” Raines said. “Long bus rides hurt attendance, discipline and academic performance. Instead of fixing our outdated funding formula, the state continues expanding the Hope Scholarship and encouraging charter schools.”

Board of Education president Paul Hardesty sympathized with the public pleas. He said a state with what he called “hemorrhaging” school enrollment must create a new school funding formula – last addressed, he said, in 1982.

“It’s based solely on population. Somebody, somehow, some way, is going to have to factor in that we have rural counties with large square mileage but not a lot of kids,” Hardesty said.  “This time it’s six counties. Next time will it be nine? Will it be 10? I don’t know. The mileage in our counties remains the same. Our population shrinks, but yet the way we’re counted, by headcount for funding, remains the same.”  

Before each vote, State School Superintendent Michele Blatt was asked the same question: “Does the closure, or the consolidation continue to ensure the delivery of a thorough and efficient education to the affected students?” Blatt responded “Yes sir” to every question.