On this West Virginia Morning, the Mountain Valley Pipeline is under scrutiny from federal regulators after it failed a pressure test in Virginia last month. Curtis Tate spoke with Cynthia Quarterman, the former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration from 2009 to 2014, about the federal agency’s role in regulating 3 million miles of pipeline.
On this West Virginia Morning, the Mountain Valley Pipeline is under scrutiny from federal regulators after it failed a pressure test in Virginia last month. Curtis Tate spoke with Cynthia Quarterman, the former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration from 2009 to 2014, about the federal agency’s role in regulating 3 million miles of pipeline.
Also, in this show, just before the start of the fall semester last year, the band director at Midland Trail High School left for another job. With no one else to take over, senior Carol Nottingham stepped in. We bring you this story from student reporter Kelsie Carte.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Emily Rice produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
The Department of Education is launching a multimillion-dollar program to help boost the completion of FAFSA for high school students nationwide.
The Department of Education is launching a multimillion-dollar program to help boost the completion of FAFSA for high school students nationwide.
Last week Gov. Jim Justice declared a state emergency following a botched roll out of the new Free Application For Student Aid, or FASFA.
According to the governor’s office there has been a 40 percent decrease in FAFSA applications in the state. Justice said a difficult and complicated process is partially to blame.
Monday, the US Department of Education launched a program to expand availability of advisers, counselors, and coaches to help students and caregivers through the FAFSA process. It also aims to increase the hours that FAFSA support staff are available on weekends and evenings.
The department’s goal is to increase the number of high school students who complete their FAFSA.
Fifty million dollars will be available in grants to organizations that can expand college access and enrollment.
Gov. Jim Justice called for state lawmakers to reverse a law that allows students to transfer high schools to play on another sports team without changing addresses or completing a waiting period.
In 2023, state lawmakers passed a bill that, in part, allowed for high school students to immediately transfer high school sports teams, regardless of whether they changed addresses.
In his Wednesday briefing, Gov. Jim Justice called on state lawmakers to that law, calling the bill’s initial passage a “real, real mistake.”
Previously, state policies for high school sports required students to physically move to join a new school’s sports team, or wait a year after transferring to become eligible to compete.
Passage of the bill was contentious. It followed failed attempts from Sen Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, to push such a bill into law both in 2022 and earlier in 2023.
The bill was ultimately passed when it was coupled with sports transfer policies for recipients of the state’s Hope Scholarship.
But critics of the law, including Justice, have said it created an imbalance in high school sports, as students from schools with fewer resources are transferring to larger, more competitive schools in record numbers.
In November, Mountain State Spotlight found that the number of football games won by at least 70 points hit a record-high 13 in fall 2023 — compared to zero in 2022, and just four in 2021.
They also found that 432 students transferred high schools for sports in the fall, which tripled the number of transfers from the previous year-and-a-half.
In 2023, Justice allowed the bill to become law without signing it himself, voicing support for its Hope Scholarship transfer policy but concern over the broader sports transfer rule.
Now, however, Justice has become more vocal in his calls for lawmakers to change course.
During a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, Justice asked legislators to pass a bill reversing the controversial policy before the end of this year’s legislative session.
“If you play on a team and your team loses that game 95 to three in football, how do you feel tomorrow to get up and to go to school? Really and truly, that’s what we’re talking about,” Justice said. “We’re talking about embarrassing kids.”
Justice said if it remains in effect, the law could discourage youth from underprivileged backgrounds to pursue sports.
“We’re talking about kids that then decide, ‘I’m not going to have anything to do with this, even though I’m a pretty good athlete, and I’m a pretty good football player or basketball player,” he said.
The deadline is Feb. 28 for the West Virginia Senate or the House of Delegates to pass any bills that might make the change the governor is asking for. After that the chambers will turn to reviewing bills passed by the other chamber.
Three high schoolers from around the state have been named to this year’s class of U.S. Presidential Scholars.
Three high schoolers from around the state have been named to this year’s class of U.S. Presidential Scholars.
They are Dalton S. Cook from Westside High School in Clear Fork, Rania Zuri from Morgantown High School and Isabella Mackenzie Herrod from Liberty High School.
Herrod was specifically named a Presidential Scholar in Career and Technical Education.
They’re part of a group of 161 students selected for the accomplishment nationwide. This year, more than 5,000 candidates qualified through either their performance on the SAT or ACT exams, or through nominations from school officers or organizations.
The program was created in 1964 to recognize the nation’s most distinguished high school seniors. In 2015, it was extended to recognize students going into career and technical education fields.
The program selects scholars from the pool of candidates each year through a review committee, which evaluates students based on their “academic achievement, personal characteristics, leadership and service activities and an analysis of their essay,” according to its website.
Cook, Zuri and Herrod have been recognized for their achievements in statements from U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, as well as Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.
“U.S. Presidential Scholars have always represented the future of our country and the bright promise it holds. I want each of these remarkable students to know: your passion and intellect, pursuit of excellence, and spirit of service are exactly what our country needs,” Cardona said.
All three students will be honored with an online recognition program this summer and will be awarded with the U.S. Presidential Scholars medallion.
Nearly 300 groups, with more than 2,600 participants, are registered to comb Mountain State main and back roads, picking up tons of trash.
Saturday’s statewide Adopt-A Highway spring cleaning should make our country roads much less cluttered. Nearly 300 groups, with more than 2,600 participants, are registered to comb Mountain State main and back roads, picking up tons of trash.
The annual spring cleanup is hosted by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Division of Highways.
Terry Fletcher, the chief communications officer for the DEP, said volunteers will be provided with all necessary protective gear and pick up materials.
Fletcher said DEP is hoping to recruit more Adopt-A-Highway groups and members with the statewide event.
“We have a Youth Environmental Program that does a really great job with helping to promote this as well,” Fletcher said. “They’re talking to school groups and students across the state about ways they can join in and pitch in to help clean up their communities.”
Fletcher said tossed out trash is not just an eyesore – it’s an environmental hazard and a physical danger.
”This stuff that you throw out of your car, it’s gonna find its way into a stream,” he said. “It’s gonna find its way into people’s yards and into our forests, stuff that can cause all kinds of environmental issues and problems.”
Fletcher said a spring cleanup goal is to surpass the 68,000 pounds of trash removed from more than 800 miles of roadway last year.
Click here for information on how to get involved.
The West Virginia National Cemeteries Project pairs history graduate students from West Virginia University with high school students from Grafton High School to delve into the lives of veterans buried in the local cemeteries.
Kyle Warmack, West Virginia Humanities Council program officer and the project’s facilitator, said the project’s goal was to foster deeper engagement with the stories and sacrifice of local veterans, but also to promote important research and writing skills.
“At the Humanities Council, I have the privilege of working with a lot of folks in academia at the college level, and when you talk to them, there can sometimes be frustration with the students that they have coming in, and the level of experience they have with research and writing,” he said.
For the cemeteries project, Warmack helped pair history graduate students from West Virginia University with high school students from Grafton High School to delve into the lives of veterans buried in the local cemeteries. Grafton was a logical place for Warmack to start the project.
“Look at Grafton and the long history that they have with the cemetery, with the Memorial Day parade they have here,” he said. “Parades are wonderful, these are wonderful displays of both community and patriotic sentiment. But when do we get a chance to tell the stories behind the veterans that we’re celebrating? There are thousands of headstones in these cemeteries.”
The Grafton National Cemetery was established in 1867 as a permanent burial site for Union soldiers who had died in hospitals and on battlefields throughout West Virginia. Two years later, the town held its first Memorial Day parade, a tradition that continues to this day. Then, in the 1960s, the West Virginia National Cemetery was established five miles away in Pruntytown as the Grafton cemetery began to fill up.
Some of the students from Grafton High School and West Virginia University that participated in the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project pose for a photograph at the Taylor County Historical and Genealogical Society Monday, April 24, 2023. Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
For high school students like Karigan Roudte, who researched the life and World War II service of twins Charles and William Lewellyn of Harrisville, the process was eye-opening.
“It’s an amazing experience. I honestly have never really thought about war as much as I have,” she said. “It’s brought so much insight to me to see how these twin brothers, they grew up together and they died together, how they intersect. It’s honestly a real changing thing, how I thought about war and life, and it’s brought such a new world and opened so many different doors to me. I think it’s a really great thing that they brought us to be able to experience.”
Becky Bartlett is a teacher and librarian at Grafton High School, and along with her colleague Richard Zukowski, she supervises the students’ research. Bartlett said the project is an engaging way for her students to learn research skills that go well beyond the computer.
“Probably one of the most important things for the kids of the 21st century to learn is that not everything is online. Since I have been the librarian, I have literally had students say to me, ‘It’s all online,’” she said. “They don’t understand, because they’ve grown up in a life that they can easily get online and search, that sometimes you have to go find a book. Sometimes you have to go to the courthouse and pull records. Sometimes you have to actually contact people to get interviews that were recorded, things like that, that aren’t online.”
Students had the opportunity to learn about major military events like the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II, to the more human aspects of service, like Pauline Tetrick of Bridgeport who joined the Women’s Army Corps at the age of 36, at the end of the Korean War.
Beyond hard skills, one aspect of the project that Bartlett likes is that she can see it fostering a deeper interest in history, one that she hopes will last her students a lifetime.
“We have learned a lot just about the history of these wars that these veterans served in. I did not know the story behind the USS Indianapolis until we did this project,” she said. “There’s that rabbit hole, you learn something, and then you see the connection to it in so many places. And I think they’ll probably be learning stuff for the rest of their lives.”
One of the displays created by students presents information about veteran Bud Greathouse, who was killed in action serving on the USS Indianapolis. Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
That level of engagement is certainly evident when speaking with Emily Bublitz who is a graduate student of history at West Virginia University.
“We do a lot of the back-end research,” she said. “In the initial stages, we go in and we have this huge master list of everyone who has been buried at the National Cemetery, then we go through and research the vets to try and get one that we find that has enough materials on them to know that we can write a biography based off of them, because some people, there’s nothing. Maybe, there’s like just a draft card, but there’s nothing else.”
For Bublitz, the most rewarding aspect of the project is precisely why it was established: making a human connection to the name on the gravestone.
“The more I learn about these veterans like that, the more I care about them and their stories, and I want to do them justice,” she said. “That becomes very central to how I go about doing my work with this. I see it as giving them back their personhood, because they’re more than just veterans. That’s such a core part of who they were, but they’re also more than that. I want them to be remembered as fully fleshed out people who had families and interests and hobbies.”
The West Virginia Humanities Council hopes to expand the project to more schools in the coming years.
