School board members in a West Virginia county ravaged by the 2016 floods have voted to take legal action to contest the state board’s rejection of a plan to consolidate five schools onto one campus.
The Nicholas County Board of Education made the decision Wednesday after the state Board of Education voted 7-1 Tuesday to reject the county’s proposed consolidation plan.
After Richwood High School and two middle schools were destroyed by flooding, the plan proposed closing the three schools, Nicholas County High School and the county vocational center and consolidating them onto one campus near Summersville.
The county superintendent will receive alternatives from community members by June 28.
Federal Emergency Management Agency representative Steve Ward says FEMA cannot spend any money to rebuild schools on a flood plain.
The West Virginia Board of Education has voted to move forward with a plan to close nearly a dozen schools in Fayette County.
The state board’s vote during Wednesday’s meeting was not unanimous, board member and former Delegate Tom Campbell voed against the measure, but the county will now move forward with plans to close ten facilities and reconfigure several others.
The amendment to the county’s Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan also includes redistricting dozens of students, sending them to high schools in Greenbrier and Kanawha counties.
The vote came after a 9 month study by the West Virginia School Building authority. The study found it would take more than $216 million to renovate the county’s existing facilities.
The West Virginia Board of Education has been in control of Fayette County since 2010.
County voters have not approved a school excess levy for school maintenance and construction in more than 40 years, leaving many facilities in disrepair.
The state School Building Authority board must also vote to approve the consolidation plan. Fayette County officials will then return to the SBA in December to ask for more than $20 million to begin carrying out the plan.
The West Virginia School Building Authority is set to vote on whether to provide funding for Fayette County’s school consolidation plan.
Fayette County is among 20 counties vying for funding for school construction projects. The authority plans to decide which projects will receive funding on Monday during its quarterly meeting in Charleston.
Fayette County’s school system is seeking up to $39.7 million from the authority to combine Fayetteville, Meadow Bridge, Midland Trail and Oak Hill high schools into a new school. The county would provide $17 million.
The authority had rejected the plan in September, citing a lack of local support. Authority members reversed the decision in November and agreed to consider the plan for funding.
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is staying out of a funding issue involving school consolidation in Fayette County.
State Board of Education President Mike Green wrote to Tomblin on Tuesday, asking that the School Building Authority conduct a new vote after rejecting Fayette County’s funding request.
Tomblin spokeswoman Shayna Varner tells the Charleston Gazette-Mail that Tomblin won’t force the SBA to hold a special meeting.
In September the Board of Education voted to combine Fayetteville, Meadow Bridge, Midland Trail and Oak Hill high schools. In denying the funding request Monday, the SBA cited a lack of local support, including a rejected bond issue by voters.
Green says the SBA exceeded its authority because it was only supposed to determine whether the required data had been filed.
The state School Building Authority has rejected a funding plan for the consolidation of four high schools in Fayette County.
The authority voted Monday to deny the county’s request to let it compete with other counties for state funding to build a new high school. The authority distributes money raised from both state general revenue and lottery funds.
The state Board of Education voted this month to combine Fayetteville, Meadow Bridge, Midland Trail and Oak Hill high schools. The county then sought funding of up to $58 million for the new school.
Authority board members were concerned that neither Fayette County’s residents nor the local school board voted for the consolidation plan.
County voters in June rejected a bond issue that would have consolidated three high schools.
The state Board of Education voted to take a year to study the possible the implications of the closure and consolidation of a small Fayette County High…
The state Board of Education voted to take a year to study the possible the implications of the closure and consolidation of a small Fayette County High School. Meadow Bridge houses students grades 7 through 12 and was set to be closed within the next three years, but the Board’s decision is now forcing the county to reassess that plan and also reassess their upcoming school bond.
Talk of consolidation can be a tricky thing for any county. Whether it comes down to a decreasing school population, aging buildings that can no longer be kept up, or poor rates of student achievement, there are multiple factors at play.
But for Fayette County, it comes down to money.
“Whether we can reduce high schools, the number of high schools or not, we will need to reduce the number of employees we have at the secondary level,” Fayette County Superintendent Keith Butcher told the Board.
Butcher addressed the funding issues the county is facing—issues the county has addressed by planning to consolidate three high schools.
Butcher said each year, the county has seen less and less of a surplus in their budget to the point where next year, they’re expecting to go into the red.
As a part of their ten year Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan, a plan each county is required to submit to the state Board, Fayette was set to combine Meadow Bridge, Fayetteville and Midland Trail High Schools into the existing Midland Trail facility with some additional renovations. That way, the county only had to staff three high schools instead of the current five, saving significantly on personnel costs.
But with a vote of 6-2, the Board amended the county’s facilities plan, also known as their CEFP, and pulled any future plans for Meadow Bridge High School off the table and out of consideration for another year, essentially saving the school from consolidation. At least for now.
“When you pull Meadow Bridge out of that consolidation then we need to go back to the drawing board and see if the plan still works or if we need to reconfigure how we’re looking at things,” Butcher said after the vote. “We’ll also need to realign costs.”
Credit Ashton Marra
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Dozens of Fayette County residents, both supporters and detractors of the consolidation plans for Meadow Bridge High School, packed the state Board of Education meeting at the Department of Education in Charleston.
While the vote was at least a small win for Meadow Bridge supporters, dozens of which showed up to the meeting to speak against consolidation, members of the Board, in particular President Gayle Manchin, see this as a time extension.
Basically, let’s take a step back, study the implications of closing the school, and see if that’s the best option for the county. With the state currently in control of Fayette County Schools, Manchin said they want to get it right.
“The parents that I heard get up and speak about Meadow Bridge, their concern was the travel time on extremely treacherous roads in the winter from Meadow Bridge to Midland Trail and yet in every report that was given never addressed that. Ever,” Manchin said. “It was always about; Midland Trail is a good high school. I never said that Midland Trail wasn’t a good high school.”
Credit Ashton Marra
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Carolyn Arritt, a retired Fayette County educator, holds up a map of Fayette County as she addresses the Board. Arritt was concerned with the travel time students face at consolidated schools.
“We want what is best for our kids. What I asked for on behalf of the Board at our last meeting was that we remove Meadow Bridge from this argument right now because feelings were very high and I felt without trying to address people’s feelings in this that Fayette County had no hope in passing a bond.”
And with that statement, Manchin got to the real issue in Fayette County: a bond proposal set to hit the ballot in May of 2014.
Ask anybody on the street in Fayetteville, Mt. Hope, Milburn or Spring Dale, a lot of community members are saying the bond won’t pass. A bond hasn’t passed since the late 1970’s.
County officials planned to add the consolidation plan into their bond proposal along with other vital facility updates.
“The current capitol improvement plan includes submittal of a School Building Authority project to replace Collins Middle School at a total cost of $24.4 million,” Butcher told the Board. “Our match for that would be a bond that needs to be approved and supported by the voters of Fayette County.”
Butcher said the bond would also include renovations for the consolidated Midland Trail and two brand new elementary schools the county desperately needs.
By tabling the plans to consolidate Meadow Bridge, Butcher and the county are essentially back at square one and will now have to reassess their bond proposal before its submittal date in January.
“It will take money from the School Building Authority from the state of West Virginia and also that support from the voters so we will need to go back to the drawing board and find a plan that the citizen’s can agree on so we can move Fayette County forward,” he said. “Their facilities are in grave need of repair and we still need to accomplish that job.”
Over the next year, the state Board of Education plans to study the impact closing Meadow Bridge High School would have on travel time for students, participation rates in extracurricular activities, student achievement and also the possibility of sending kids to high schools outside of the county instead of the consolidated Midland Trail High School.