That’s the message from Sophia Mullins, first grader at Gauley River Grade School. She wrote to Senator Joe Manchin asking him for help:
Dear Sir, My name is Sophia Mullins. I live in Craigsville, West Virginia. I am in the first grade at Gauley River Grade School. All we do is work, work, work. I need a break. Can you please help? Thanks, Sophia
Manchin fielded a call to Miss Sophia while she was at school to encourage her and all her friends to continue to work hard in school. The senator told the first grader receiving a good education is the best way for all young students to succeed when they grow up.
Here’s video from Sen. Manchin’s office of he and Sophia speaking with one another on the phone:
In his first press conference as Speaker of the state House of Delegates, Speaker Tim Miley announced the intended formation of a new committee in his chamber, the committee on small business, entrepreneurship and economic development.
The committee will be separated from the one already in existence in the House which is focused on the energy industry and labor. Miley said this new committee is important because small businesses are the backbone of future economic growth in the state.
Chaired by Del. Doug Skaff of Kanawha County, Miley said his intention for the committee is to appoint delegates with personal experience as current or previous small business owners.
“I want people who have been there, in the trenches, with that experience on that committee,” he said.
“Those are the people who are there day in and day out when the rubber meets the road trying to determine how they can succeed, how they can employee their employees and how they can make a better life for themselves and their employees.”
Because a new committee can only be established during a legislative session, Miley has established a pre-emptive work group of the committee members. They will travel the state holding forums to discuss the future of small businesses with entrepreneurs.
In a statement released Wednesday evening, House Minority Leader Tim Armstead said it is time to make bold changes to encourage the creation of small businesses and entrepreneurs across the state.
“Job creators and entrepreneurs work hard to grow their businesses and employ hard-working West Virginians,” Armstead said. “They have shared with us innovative and common sense solutions to the problems they face each day and we have worked hard to advance those solutions.”
“We are confident that, if the Democrat leadership truly listens to those who are struggling each day to make their payroll, they will quickly learn of those very basic solutions that have worked successfully in neighboring states and across the country.”
The state superintendent said enrollment numbers in public schools statewide are down and the Department of Education is now left trying to figure out where those students have gone.
Superintendent Dr. James Phares reported to a Joint Committee on Education, student enrollment has decreased by more than 1,200 student since last year.
Harrison County led the enrollment decrease losing 283 in the last five years.
Phares said the state department is going to begin an internal study of all of the possible factors for declining numbers to present to the legislature in December.
“We know our dropout rate is decreasing so we don’t think that it’s because of an increased drop out rate,” he said.
“We don’t the affect that perhaps some of the surrounding online virtual schools (have had), but we’re going to check to see if there’s been a move to that or home school or if it’s because they moved out of state..”
Berkeley County, however, is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It leads the state in growth, adding 775 students to its system in the 2013-2014 school year.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Advanced Training Center near Harpers Ferry, W.Va., will soon add new buildings.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a $51.7 million contract to construct 250 room student dormitories and a student center.
In a news release Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said the addition of dorms will turn the facility into a full service campus, and will save the government money for training and travel expenses.
“This center is on the cutting edge of education and training for Customs and Border Protection personnel who play an essential role in defending our country,” Rockefeller said.
The Advanced Training Center opened in 2005. It currently employs about 200 federal and contract workers. More than 12,000 customs officers train each year there.
The new buildings should be completed by mid-2016.
More than 42,000 West Virginians are employed by the manufacturing industry and state lawmakers were told that number is expected to grow in the coming years, but industry leaders say the state needs to focus on educating those workers now.
President of the West Virginia Manufacturer’s Association Karen Price said the problem with the state’s manufacturing industry is not a job shortage, but a labor shortage.
Price said Armstrong, a flooring company located in Randolph County, was recently looking to expand and add more than 150 jobs, but couldn’t find the workforce to fill the positions.
She told lawmakers during an education committee meeting instead, the company is pulling the expansion.
“The average wage in the manufacturing industry is about $45,000 a year,” Price said Tuesday, “and in the chemical industry it’s about $75,000 a year so those are pretty good paying jobs.”
Price said lawmakers need to focus on integrating soft skills like work ethic and communication into the education system and to start introducing kids to the field in middle school to promote the industry.
A law signed by Governor Tomblin in April is already having its intended effect of decreasing the state’s prison population. Legislators meeting this week in Charleston got an update on how Senate Bill 371, the governor’s prison reform bill, is doing.
State lawmakers are presented with projections all the time. The projected annual revenue, for example, is constantly talked about within the corridors of the Capitol because in recent years, those projections have shown major declines in funds.
But when legislators were presented another projection not meeting its mark, Deputy General Counsel for the governor Joseph Garcia said this was one to celebrate.
“So, at the end of this year, it was projected that we were going to have 7,531 inmates,” Garcia said.
But instead of following that trend, Garcia said the actual number of inmates is down by more than 250 since April.
And what about the inmate population being held in regional jails because of prison overcrowding? Garcia said that number is shrinking too.
“There has been a reduction of 554 people in the Regional Jail system,” he said.
Garcia attributes that reduction to the opening of a new Division of Corrections adult facility on the campus of the former Salem Industrial Home for Youth and to the governor’s prison reform bill.
It focused on two areas: dealing quickly with the state prison overpopulation and reducing the rate former inmates reoffend and go back to prison, known as recidivism.
Garcia said we’re now seeing the short term fixes of the bill—changes at the state Parole Board among others—kicking in. In a few years, he believes the numbers will be even stronger when programs like mandatory supervision take effect.
Credit Ashton Marra
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Deputy General Counsel for the governor Joseph Garcia shared state prison population statistics with the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority.
“We’ve made some substantial progress with respect to these numbers,” Garcia said. “We weren’t expecting to get these kinds of results this early and so it shows we’re going in the right direction.”
But state lawmakers want to make sure the trend continues and many believe it can be done with more access to programming.
At state prisons, inmates have access to rehabilitation classes to prepare them to reenter society, things like anger management or parenting courses, but state prisons are so crowded that the overflow of inmates—more than 1,100 of them—are being held in regional jails where they don’t have access to these programs.
“Why can’t we look at providing those services in the Regional Jails?” Senator Donald Cookman, a former circuit judge, asked during a Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jails and Correctional Facility Authority. “It seems to me that it can be done and be a great savings to the taxpayers and, in addition to that, a great help for society.”
Garcia said the option is something the governor’s office would consider in the future.
Dennis Foreman, Chairman of the state Parole Board, said it’s an idea he supports.
While completing these programs aren’t required to be seen by the parole board—Foreman said they help.
Having a psychological assessment, a post release housing plan and reviewing an inmate’s crime and behavior while incarcerated are the major considerations–he added those who have taken classes are more likely to actually receive parole, getting them out of the overcrowded system more quickly.
“Anybody that goes through the treatment and does everything that they’re supposed to do basically to rehabilitate, once they’re rehabilitated then we’re ready to blow them out the door if they’re not a danger to society,” Foreman said. “When you don’t have the treatment, if you have to sit and wait an extra 6 months and we’re not able to see them, they’re just sitting there not getting anything accomplished.”
“They’ve got them in the regional jails, if they can get the treatment in the regional jails, the classes, it would be so much better for everybody concerned and the rates would definitely improve.”
However, the governor’s office and the state Division of Corrections are currently looking at the option of providing these services by transferring inmates to out of state private prisons.
Constitutionally, inmates would have to volunteer for a transfer and those private facilities would have to offer the same courses as West Virginia until room becomes available for the inmate at an in state facility.
But Joe DeLong, Acting Director of the Regional Jail Authority, told the committee providing the classes now at his facilities can be done. In fact, he proposed the idea to the legislature two years ago.
“We felt at that time by making the investment to offer those programs, if we could get those people the programs they needed and if the parole board kept paroling at the same rate they were, we could reduce the future incarceration cost of about $8 million a year,” he said.
Credit Ashton Marra
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Senator Bill Laird questions Joseph Garcia, deputy general counsel for the governor, during a legislative interim meeting.
DeLong said in order to offer classes his agency would need one additional counselor at all ten facilities and more equipment like desks or computers. He estimated it would cost about $750,000 a year to provide the same level of programming in the regional jails as in the state prisons.
The catch- regional jails are mainly funded by a daily rate charged to the counties to house their prisoners and DeLong said he doesn’t feel comfortable charging the counties for a service given to inmates that should be in state funded prisons.
“I could do it now. I probably have that authority to pull it off and reshuffle the deck that I have to do it now,” he said. “I’ve just always taken the position that I wasn’t willing to share that cost across the board with the counties because I didn’t think it was fair for that operational expense to be spread into all of per diem and for the counties to be footing the bill for a state sentenced inmates programs.”
DeLong added if the legislature choose to appropriate him that money, he would make the programming available.
Garcia said the governor’s office is still in the exploratory phases of sending inmates to out of state prisons for access to programming. He said they are unsure of the cost as of yet and how doing so would compare to offering the programming instead at the regional jail level.
