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High School Graduations — A Balancing Act Between Tradition And Pandemic

High schools throughout the United States and in West Virginia have had to reimagine graduation for the Class of 2020. Many have already had drive-through, or drive by, graduations, some have done virtual ones, and others hold out hope to also have some sort of traditional ceremony later this summer.

For about 18,000 high school seniors in West Virginia, the final semester of their student career was turned upside down because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“You got those last couple months taken away from you. We didn’t realize we were never going back,” said Oak Hill High School senior Marcayla King. “We didn’t think that we weren’t ever going to see each other again, or at least until graduation … We couldn’t use those last couple months to spend time and make memories and stuff.”

When the governor closed schools for good for the rest of the semester, it quickly became clear: No prom or big senior parties. But what about graduation?

Schools across the state are trying to get creative: Some schools asked students and their family members to drive up to a designated location to receive a diploma in cap and gown and snap a picture or two.

Ripley High School in Jackson County held a parade for its 2020 graduates, announcing their names and future plans on a loudspeaker on the main drag Downtown.

And King’s high school, like some others in West Virginia, had a drive-through graduation. School officials personally delivered all diplomas to everyone’s house. And the school plans to have a traditional graduation ceremony outside later this summer.

“They’re going to have us seated six feet apart, and they’re going to broadcast it live and stuff, too, so like, parents can hear it and see it,” King said.

At the end of March, the West Virginia Department of Education created a Graduation Task Force to survey all 55 county school boards and figure out what a 2020 graduation in a pandemic could look like.

“Our goal with the task force was to really pay attention to what people wanted to do with their senior graduations,” said Jan Barth, assistant superintendent of schools, division of teaching and learning. “And we were trying to figure out ways to make sure that they had a face to face graduation if the pandemic would allow for that.”

Barth, who’s also a member of the task force, said the consensus from the beginning was to hope and plan for something traditional later in the summer. And she said the majority of high schools in West Virginia are doing that.

“I think a lot of people got good ideas about how to do it as traditionally as they possibly can, within the guidelines of the CDC requirements and the governor’s guidelines,” she said.

Those guidelines include social distancing, wearing masks and gloves, and having hand sanitizer available.

But these guidelines aren’t mandatory, and Barth said how the graduations were shaped was ultimately decided on by the local county school boards and school districts.

A staff member reaches into a vehicle to deliver a diploma at Martinsburg High School’s drive-through graduation on May 26, 2020. The majority of faculty and staff did not wear protective equipment to combat the coronavirus.

During some of the recent drive-through graduations, not every school followed these guidelines to the letter.

Take Martinsburg High School in Berkeley County.

During its drive-through graduation, many students teared up or cheered as they got out of their vehicles. Family members looked on from their cars taking photos and honking horns. Teachers stood together up the street waving the school colors and hitting cowbells.

“We wanted to celebrate the students on the day they would have graduated,” said Principal Trent Sherman.

But something was missing from almost all of the staff members — protective gear to fight the coronavirus — including Principal Sherman, who shook hands with nearly every student while not wearing gloves or a mask.

Teachers stand together up the street to cheer students as they drive by during Martinsburg High School’s drive-through graduation on May 26, 2020.

Before the event, Sherman said he didn’t have any health concerns for the evening, because the area was open and outside.

“We got open air, “ he said, “it’s nice out here; a little bit warm, but I think it will be good.”

And Martinsburg High School wasn’t alone in these lax practices.

Jan Barth said she was aware that some schools weren’t following guidelines strictly. She said her team provided all manner of guidelines for schools to follow, but at the end of the day — they’re only guidelines.

“This is not state code. It’s not state policy. It’s a local school district decision and they have all the information they need,” she said. “They had the social guidance information that they needed from the governor’s office.”

Some staff members at Martinsburg High School did wear face coverings during the drive-through graduation on May 26, 2020.

Since early May, Gov. Jim Justice has been slowly reopening West Virginia’s economy. And while the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources says we remain below the case rate that would require the state to start closing again, there are still new cases of COVID-19 being discovered every day across the state.

In Berkeley County, where Martinsburg High is located, coronavirus testing has recently become more available to the public, and the number of positive cases has grown from roughly 25 per week to between 40 and 50 new cases each week. That’s according to Dr. Terrence Reidy, health officer for the Berkeley-Morgan County Health Department and the Jefferson County Health Department.

Berkeley County has also seen the highest number of positive coronavirus cases in the state.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” said Dr. Reidy over Skype. “That either the masks aren’t important, or I don’t have to worry about it, or that this is not a real virus, and it’s not really deadly. And that’s just not true.”

Reidy cautioned that as things continue to reopen, the way we interact with one another must change to limit the spread of the virus.

Reidy acknowledges that social change is hard, but he said if people don’t make the effort to take precautions, things will only get worse — especially in the Eastern Panhandle.

“To me, this is still the first wave coming in from Baltimore and Washington,” he said. “It’s not so much the wave, as the tide coming in. We know that every week or so they’re going to be more and more cases. And it may change a little bit, but with time it’s going to increase.”

As some high schools in West Virginia begin moving forward with traditional graduations, state officials are urging staff and students to be conscientious of others, to follow social distancing guidelines, and to wear a mask when inside a public space or when in close proximity to others.

Coach Kellie: A Tiny West Virginia High School is Making Football History

It took a few weeks for Hannan High School principal Karen Oldham to realize her school might have made history. She was so busy with the day-to-day grind of running the small, rural Mason County school that it didn’t cross her mind, until an elderly alumnus brought it to her attention.

Oldham still was not completely certain the school had done anything significant, so before making any kind of formal announcement, she phoned the West Virginia Secondary Schools Athletics Commission and asked officials there to do some digging. They called back a few days later.

Hannan High School, located in Mason County’s farm country, is a small 7-12 school with only 300 students.

It was true: Hannan had hired the first female head football coach in West Virginia history.

The Point Pleasant Register got the scoop. Then, Huntington’s Herald Dispatch and local television stations picked up the story, which led to national coverage in USA Today.

It was all a shock for Oldham. It seems that no one—not Oldham, not the hiring committee she put together, not the superintendent who added the hire to the school board’s agenda, nor the board members who unanimously approved it—realized they were doing anything newsworthy.

“Never did her gender come into our minds,” Oldham says.

All everyone knew was, they had found the best person for the job. And that person was Kellie Thomas.

* * *

The voice of Axel Rose singing “Welcome to the Jungle” cuts through the sour air of the Hannan Wildcats’ locker room as players lace up their cleats and tug navy blue jerseys over their shoulder pads.

In her office, Kellie Thomas is wearing her own uniform: a ballcap with a turquoise H, a Hannan polo shirt with a long sleeve shirt underneath, khaki cargo shorts with a Washington Redskins lanyard hanging from the left pocket and leather Carhartt boots with pink wool socks climbing her bare calves. She pulls on a hooded jacket to protect herself from the night’s drizzling rain and begins going through her pre-game preparations.

A roster sheet in the Hannan High School press box.

She replaces the batteries in the headsets she and her two assistant coaches will use to communicate during the night. She pumps up the three footballs that, as the home team, Hannan is required to supply for the game. Then she calls defensive back and running back Isaac Colecchia into her office.

Colecchia isn’t wearing pads. He suffered a concussion in last week’s game and is sitting out this week. Together, he and Thomas go through a checklist of symptoms—headache, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, insomnia, anxiousness, depression, and a few dozen more—that Colecchia ranks on a scale of zero to six. He gives most symptoms a zero, but ranks “sensitivity to light” and “sensitivity to noise” at one each. Once the symptoms go away and he’s cleared by his doctor, Colecchia will be eligible to play again.

The moment offers a glimpse at Thomas’s recent past. Although this is her first season as head football coach, she spent close to two decades as Hannan’s athletic trainer. She was there at every practice, scrimmage and game to tape up players’ ankles and wrists. Thomas was such a constant, stable presence that, over time, she became a confidant for players.

“She was their go-to when they had problems with previous coaches,” Oldham says.

That is why, when former Hannan coach Brian Scott resigned following the 2017 season, players approached Thomas and begged her to apply for the position.

With the questionnaire completed, Thomas dismisses Colecchia and leaves the office. She rallies her troops and leads the team out of the corrugated aluminum fieldhouse to a patch of grass just outside, where players arrange themselves into four rows and begin their warm ups.

Hannan players pour out of their small locker room, ready to take the field.

The team normally warms up on the field, but tonight is homecoming. The field is currently occupied by members of the homecoming court and their parents, awaiting the announcement of this year’s king and queen.

As her players stretch and run drills, Thomas and defensive coordinator Thomas Miller size up tonight’s opponents, the Parkersburg Catholic Crusaders. The team isn’t much bigger than Hannan but the Crusaders are coming into this late October contest with a 7–1 record. Hannan hasn’t won a game all season.

When homecoming festivities are finally completed, the team moves its warm-ups onto the field. Then it’s the national anthem, handshakes between team captains and the coin flip.

Hannan wins the flip and elects to receive. Parkersburg punts and stops the return at Hannan’s 25 yard line. Then, in the first drive of the game, Hannan quarterback Matthew Qualls takes the snap, hops back on his right leg to pass and launches the ball into the air.

Immediately, a Crusader linebacker reaches up and swats the ball back to Earth.

“Oh, crap,” Thomas says.

* * *

Football is a difficult sport for small schools like Hannan. The game technically requires 11 players on each side, but coaches prefer to have enough players to field two separate squads for offense and defense, plus a roster of second-string players to serve as backups. That’s why NFL teams have 53 players. Colleges often keep more than 100 on their active rosters.

Those kinds of numbers are not possible at a school like Hannan. The school has about 300 students in all, but that includes seventh and eighth graders. Only students in ninth through 12th grades are eligible to play high school football, and Hannan has around 180 students in those grades.

As a result, there are just 19 players on Hannan’s football team, which means most of those players spend nearly the entire game on the field, playing both offense and defense. There’s little opportunity for anyone to rest and recover on the sidelines, and it only takes a few injuries to jeopardize a game. In seasons past, the school has had to forfeit multiple games because there weren’t enough healthy players to field a team.

Their small size even hinders Hannan’s ability to practice. Most coaches practice plays by pitting their offense and defense squads against one another. Thomas has to split her meager roster into seven-player squads and run plays that way—players just have to imagine how the plays will work as part of an 11-player team.

Thomas spent nearly 20 years as the athletic trainer for Hannan’s football team. This is her first year as the team’s head coach, making her the first female head coach in state history.

All of this adds up to a team that, frankly, hasn’t been very successful.

“We don’t have a lot of wins. And that gets morale down,” Oldham says. That is why, in the 11 years Oldham has been principal at Hannan, she has had five head football coaches, including Thomas. Each of the previous lasted a few seasons, but, faced with bleak prospects and tempted by greener fields elsewhere, left the team behind.

Thomas, who has also coached girls basketball, volleyball, and track at the school, knew all of this when she applied to become head coach. But she also has a plan to overcome the challenges Hannan faces. She explained this strategy to the hiring panel that Oldham assembled to conduct candidate interviews. It’s one of the things that got her the job.

The cornerstone of Thomas’s strategy is conditioning. “My philosophy has always been, if you can’t keep up with a team, you have no chance of beating them,” she says.

That means players have to put up with grueling practices, with lots of running and upper body and leg work—the kinds of exercises some coaches use as punishment. Players have even been doing yoga with Mrs. Solomon, the school’s art and dance teacher, to improve their balance.

So far, this training has not translated into wins. But both Thomas and her players are seeing the effects.

“They say, ‘Kellie, we’ve never felt this good after a game before,’” Thomas says. “The scoreboard doesn’t show heart and determination. My kids have got both.”

Thomas is taking the long view. About half of her team are freshmen and sophomores. By the time those boys are juniors and seniors, Thomas hopes to have created a team of strong, well-conditioned and well-trained football players that can hold its own against anyone in the state’s single-A conference.

By then, she hopes, that heart and determination might start showing up on the scoreboard.

* * *

Fans haven’t always been understanding of Hannan’s lack of success.

“I don’t want to say ‘hate mail,’ but I’ll say I’ve got ‘inconsiderate mail’ about my coaches,” Oldham says, but so far, she hasn’t heard anything negative about Thomas. Not when the news broke that Hannan had hired a female football coach, nor after the season began and it was clear success still would not come easy for the team.

Shawn Coleman, a state trooper and parent who videos Hanna’s home games, hasn’t heard anything negative, either. “Being in the press box, you can hear the bleachers. I’ve not heard one person say anything negative about the coaching this year. I haven’t heard anybody talking bad about her.”

Thomas says she hasn’t experienced any blowback, either, but she knows her gender does not go unnoticed on the field. “As a woman, across from the opposing coach, I know that’s what they’re thinking. I know they’re thinking ‘Good lord, I hope they don’t beat us.’”

Standing in a drizzling rain, Hannan head football coach Kellie Thomas toes the sideline as she watches a punt return.

That doesn’t bother her, though. “To me, football is football, whether its a man or woman coaching. If you know the game, you know the game.” And this isn’t the first time she’s been the only woman on the field.

Thomas grew up idolizing her three older brothers. They all played football and basketball, so she did, too.

“Anything they did, I wanted to do,” Thomas says.

When she was in third grade, Thomas joined her elementary school’s girls basketball team. Not long after that, her brother Shawn, five years her senior, got sick and couldn’t play on his own basketball team. The school asked Thomas to take his place. She joined without hesitation because, “Anything a boy could do, I knew I could do just as well, or better,” she says.

In the summer, instead of joining a softball team, Thomas played on her uncle’s Little League team. She proved to be one of his best players, especially on the pitchers’ mound. Her peers were not always enthusiastic about her success.

“I didn’t have many guy friends,” she laughs. “You’d strike them out and they never would speak to you.”

Thomas played on Point Pleasant High School’s girls basketball team, earning all-conference nods each year, and threw discus and shot put on the school’s track team. She was the state shot put champion in 1989, her senior year, even after suffering a separated shoulder during basketball season. That same year she set a school shot put record, 38.10 meters, that stood for 27 years. She became the first woman inducted into Point Pleasant High’s athletics hall of fame.

After high school, Thomas attended Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where she walked on to the school’s track team. She majored in physical education and sports medicine, because she saw it as a way to make sports a more permanent part of her life.

“When I’m too old to play, I could still be around it. I knew I wanted to work with younger kids and teach them,” she says.

As a sports medicine major, Thomas also found herself spending considerable time with Marshall’s football team. She was on the Thundering Herd’s sidelines when the team defeated Youngstown State to clinch the school’s first national championship in 1992.

When players got their championship rings, the university gave Thomas and the other female trainers big square pendants featuring the same design. “It was an experience of a lifetime,” she says.

* * *

By halftime, the Crusaders have run up the score to 0–35.

As Mrs. Solomon’s dance squad takes the muddy field to perform a choreographed routine to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the Wildcats retreat to their fieldhouse to regroup. Offensive coordinator Josh Starkey scribbles on the whiteboard, trying to help players spot the holes in Parkersburg’s defensive line. “Little mistakes are killing us,” he says.

‘Family’ is the rallying cry of Thomas’s football team. It’s what players holler when they break out of a huddle, and it’s emblazoned on this sign just inside the locker room door.

Thomas doesn’t make any speeches. Instead, she moves through the room, reading her players. Tight end and linebacker Dylan Starkey is sitting along the back wall, distressing over the likely outcome of the game. Thomas puts her fingers to her lips. “Dylan, shhh.”

She spots her quarterback Matthew Qualls sitting on a bench, elbows on his knees and his head bowed to the ground.

“I’ve got two quarters left to play in my last ever home game,” Qualls says, evenly. He’s a senior, and this is Hannan’s last home game of the season. They will finish the year on the road, an hour and a half away at Tolsia High School in Wayne County, West Virginia.

“Well, let’s make a statement,” Thomas says. “I just need you out of your own head. You’re afraid of falling, but you need to roll and get that throw out.”

Qualls nods his head. Halftime is almost over. He puts his helmet back on his head and starts for the door. “Last two quarters of my last home game,” he says.

* * *

Thomas knows it isn’t all about winning. Her players realize that, too.

“Kellie’s got a quote: ‘Student, then athlete,’” says sophomore safety Ryan Hall. “She wants us to succeed in learning and make sure we have good grades. And make sure we aren’t in trouble.”

This philosophy is something she learned from Jim Donnan, the coach who led Marshall’s football team to that 1992 championship. “It was no nonsense,” she says of Donnan’s coaching style.

“If you were penalized, he stuck to it. You violated the rules, you paid the consequences,” she says.

There is no better example of this than the aforementioned championship game against Youngstown State. Just before that game, Marshall’s starting kicker David Merrick violated team rules. Donnan, true to his word, suspended the player which meant the team’s backup—David’s older brother Willy, a soccer player who had never kicked in a collegiate football game—would take the field in the Thundering Herd’s most important game in years.

Willy Merrick ended up winning that game with a last second, tie-breaking field goal. But the tale could have easily had a less-than-storybook ending, and Donnan would have no doubt faced criticism for suspending his starting kicker at such a crucial moment.

The coach’s willingness to stick by his standards, no matter the consequences, stayed with Thomas.

“That’s how I run my program,” Thomas says. “I have a ‘two-strike, you’re out’ rule.” If one of her players gets detention or lets his grades slip, Thomas suspends him for a game. “The second time it happens, you turn your stuff in. They knew that when I took this position.”

Of course, none of this is to say that Thomas does not care about winning. If her team is following the rules—if everyone is keeping up with their school work, staying out of trouble, and staying healthy—she would like nothing more than to create a dominate football program at Hannan.

That competitive drive is on display every Friday, no matter who Hannan is playing or what the scoreboard reads.

In the first game of the 2018 season, Hannan played Tug Valley High School, the No. 5-ranked team in their conference. A referee approached Thomas before the game and asked if she wanted to shorten the second half. In West Virginia high school football, if a blowout seems imminent, the losing coach has the option of shortening the last two 12-minute quarters to six or even three minutes each. It’s a way of preventing scores from getting too embarrassing.

Hannan head football coach Kellie Thomas watches players warm up before their game against Parkersburg Catholic.

Thomas is morally opposed to the idea. “I’m competitive. I will fight, tooth and nail, to the last wire,” she says. She told the referee she would not, under any circumstances, shorten the game. “He said ‘I’ll ask you at half time.’”

By halftime, Hannan was losing 0–48. Both the referee and Tug Valley’s game administrator asked if she wanted to shorten the game.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

Thomas sees shortening quarters as an insult to her players. “That means I’ve given up on them. They take that to heart. I’m not going to do that to them.”

It goes back to a promise she made to the team when she agreed to apply for the head coach position. “My words to them were, ‘I will never quit coaching on you, during a game or during a season,’” she says. “I told them I expect the same from them. Not to quit on the field.”

* * *

Thomas does not ask for shortened quarters in the second half of the October game against Parkersburg Catholic either, even as Crusaders widen the score to 0–43 in the second half.

The stadium is quieter than in the first half. Much of the rain-soaked crowd has gone home. The announcer, seated up in the warm press box, offers only the perfunctory calls. Even the cheerleaders, clear plastic ponchos pulled over their tracksuits, are chanting less frequently. But when their cheers do come, they take on an unintentionally ironic tone.

“Cats, cats, you can do it,” the girls say in unison, “if you put your minds to it.”

Yet the mood among Hannan’s players and coaches is strangely ebullient. Nearly everyone is smiling, even though there are just minutes left in the game and defeat is now inevitable.

Thomas is no longer concerned about winning the game. She just wants to get No. 11, senior Andrew Gillispie, into the endzone.

Gillispie was previously the team’s running back, but volunteered to switch to the offensive and defensive line this season, just to help the team out. Thomas wants to get him a final touchdown to cap off his high school career.

Thomas slaps hands with Parkersburg Catholic players and coaches following Hannan’s 0–43 loss on Oct. 27, 2018.

Running back Isaac Colecchia, who has spent the night as the team’s ball boy, produces his iPhone to capture the moment. Qualls hands Gillispie the ball. He dashes for the sideline. When he reaches the 14 yard line, he slips in the mud and fumbles the ball. A Parkersburg player promptly falls on top of it. There will be no touchdown for Gillispie tonight.

The Crusaders run out the clock. Final score, 0–43. The teams form a circle, bow their heads, and recite the Lord’s Prayer. The defensive line smears Miller’s face with mud. Thomas gathers her team for one final huddle of the night. “We gave it a heck of an effort out there,” she says.

They break from the huddle with their customary chant—“One, two, three, FAMILY”—and head back to the locker room.

In her office once again, Thomas removes her wet and muddy rain jacket. She tosses her headset on the desk. Her players, now wearing street clothes, stop by to say goodnight.

“Love ya, Kellie,” Qualls says as he heads for the door.

“Love you, too,” she says.

And she does. Other coaches might have come to Hannan, played a few disappointing seasons, and moved on. But that’s not Thomas.

“I love every one of them as if they were my own,” she says. “I hope I’m coaching football and girls basketball ‘til I have to be carted off. I have no plans of ever leaving Hannan High School.”

For all her knowledge about sports and coaching, this is one thing Thomas has never mastered. She has never quite figured out how to give up.

Zack Harold is a writer based in Charleston, West Virginia, and is the managing editor of WV Living and Wonderful West Virginia magazines.

Teens and Guns: Will School Shootings Impact First Timer Voters’ Choices at the Polls?

Nicholas Chaffins saw a need for change.

On March 14, Chaffins, then a junior at Morgantown High School in Morgantown, West Virginia, joined his peers to walk out of their classrooms to protest gun violence.

“If you talk to pretty much any student, we’re pretty fed up with it and we want something to change,” Chaffins said. “We were doing something. We were participating in activism.”

It was a month after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people, including 14 students, were killed. Morgantown joined dozens of schools across the country in walkouts following the incident calling on their lawmakers to make changes to gun laws in their states.

But other shootings followed. On May 18, 10 people–eight students and two teachers– were killed in a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas.

Morgantown High School senior Nicholas Chaffins.

“These walkouts, these protests, they’re not going to stop until something happens or we grow up and take their offices,” Chaffins said in an interview more than seven months after his first walkout.

Chaffins wants to see a more complete background check system in the U.S. and a ban on assault-style rifles.

And he’s not alone in those opinions. After the Parkland shooting, a group of survivors organized rallies and marches at their state and eventually the U.S. Capitol calling for increased background checks and stricter gun laws.

Closer to home for Chaffins, 100 Days in Appalachia and Inspire U.S., a nonpartisan organization that encourages high school students to be civically engaged, polled nearly 800 high school seniors in West Virginia about an array of political issues in September. More than half of respondents, 59 percent, either agreed or strongly agreed that there should be restrictions on access to semi-automatic weapons.

Courtney Ramage, a sophomore at Lincoln High School, in Shinnston, agrees with Chaffins that background checks should be more strict, but said once someone goes through an intensive review process, they shouldn’t face restrictions on what they can and cannot buy.

But Ramage said when she hears a loud noise at school, she gets scared.

“I feel like if there is a big noise, they should make an announcement and be like, ‘It’s nothing. It’s fine,’” she said. “To make sure we’re fine, not panicking.”

Sometimes, Ramage said, she feels uneasy in her school because of the rash of school shootings in the country this year. Alison Proffitt, who is also a sophomore at Lincoln, agreed that sometimes, she doesn’t feel safe at school. If her teachers were armed, Proffitt said, that might help.

“I think they should obviously have a background check, but I don’t think I would mind if teachers were armed,” she said. “I trust most of my teachers.”

The 100 Days in Appalachia poll found 34 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with Proffitt that their teachers should be allowed to carry guns, but 46 percent opposed or strongly opposed it.

Chaffins said he would feel uneasy if his teachers carried firearms.

“In my view, guns shouldn’t be in school at all,” he said. “If the problem is guns, you shouldn’t be handing out more guns.

Chaffins hasn’t always had an interest in government, but recently, that’s changed.

“Now that I just see that there’s nothing happening about an issue of our time, I’m very invested in government and what people have to say about it,” he said.

Young people are notoriously known for having low voter turnout rates, but if that would change, political pundits believe they could potential swing a number of elections.

100 Days in Appalachia’s poll found half of the respondents who are eligible to vote in Tuesday’s midterms said they would definitely cast a ballot compared to just 3 percent who said they definitely would not.

This story was produced as part of a social justice reporting collaboration between Morgan State University’s College of Global Journalism and Communication and the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University.

New Survey Finds West Virginia Students Reject Party Lines, Vote on Issues Instead

Red state vs. blue state. Conservative vs. liberal. Republican vs. Democrat.

These binary terms dominate the nation’s political narrative leading up to major elections, including this year’s midterms on November 6. The national media likes clear cut sides to a political story, but a deeper look at the thoughts and feelings of Appalachian youth show a generation struggling to fit their opinions about the nation’s most timely issues into those boxes.

That’s just one insight gained from a survey of nearly 800 high school seniors across West Virginia conducted last month by 100 Days in Appalachia and Inspire U.S., a nonpartisan organization that encourages high school students to be civically engaged.

The students shared their opinions on a number of topics including health care, immigration and environmental regulations. The results show that the politics of these young voters, many of whom are gearing up to cast their first ballots, don’t fall within the normal party lines recognized by most Americans.

For example, nearly half of respondents– 44 percent– strongly agree same-sex couples should be able to marry, while 43 percent either strongly agreed or agreed that the number of people allowed to immigrate to the U.S. should be reduced.

“It’s interesting that all these people have very strong opinions about immigration, especially here, because we don’t really have immigrants in West Virginia,” said Preston County High School senior Henry Cerbone, who disagreed with immigration limits. “But people…don’t really know and they don’t really care about the positive effects of immigration.”

Nearly 60 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that access to assault-style firearms should be more restrictive, while 34 percent support or strongly support arming their teachers in school.

In the wake of several high-profile school shootings this year, including the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the issue of gun control has sparked a national movement getting young people active in politics.

Trey Keys, right, sits with a fellow student at Tyler Consolidated High School. Both shared their thoughts about the survey questions with 100 Days in Appalachia.

“I don’t want to have to go to school thinking, ‘Am I going to die today?’” Trey Keys, a senior at Tyler Consolidated High School said. “Schools shouldn’t have to feel like they have to have cops everywhere. We should feel safe at school.”

This election cycle, access to affordable healthcare is one of the top issues in many races. Over 60 percent of respondents said they support the government providing healthcare to all U.S. citizens, whether they have the ability to pay for it or not, and 36 percent supported a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.

November’s midterms will be the first time many of the participating students are eligible to vote.

Half of those polled who are eligible to vote said they will definitely cast a ballot Tuesday, compared to 16 percent who said they probably or definitely will not.

The survey was conducted in September using technology from GroundSource, which sends questions directly to students via text message.

Students were not required to respond to every question, although a majority did. The survey, however, is not a representative sample of West Virginia teens. They were recruited through their high school civics teachers.

West Virginia Agency Sponsors Contest on Alcohol Awareness

West Virginia high school students can submit entries in an annual state-sponsored contest on the dangers of drinking and driving and underage alcohol consumption.

The West Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Administration is accepting essay or video entries for the NO School Spirits contest through Dec. 22.

The winning high school will receive $5,000 and will be invited to help create a formal public service announcement to be distributed statewide during the 2018 prom and graduation season.

Prizes of $2,500 for second place and $1,000 for third place also will be given. The prizes must be used for a school-sanctioned event or to buy school equipment.

The contest is funded with grants from State Farm, the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association and the Governors Highway Safety Program.

High School Students Build Tiny Homes for Flood Victims

Ten tiny homes lined up in two rows at the National Guard air base in Charleston recently. West Virginia high school students built the homes for victims of the June, 2016, historic flooding who were still struggling to find adequate housing.

A student demonstrates a hideaway “Murphy Bed” in one of the tiny homes.

The idea was that instead of vocational students building birdhouses or shelves – they could use the skills they were learning in class – carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, welding – to help out local families.

“I was very concerned that folks in West Virginia were still suffering even though all the press had gone away — just like there’s a new story, there’s a new day,” said Kathy D’Antoni, West Virginia’s chief officer for career and technical education. Twelve vocational schools received $20,000 for the project from the state board of education.

A student works at Carver Career Center outside Charleston

“And it’s a killer time frame for these schools,” she said. “Takes normally 4-6 months to build a tiny home, they’ve done it in 9 weeks.”

It should also be noted that all the tiny homes projects also received significant support – both financial and labor – from the schools’ communities.

Most of these homes – there are 15 total – are less than 500 sq. feet, but are designed to house two-six people. For reference, the average American home is about 2,500 sq. feet according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Up here’s the loft that’s where they sleep, that’s where the hot water tank stays, then right here’s like your living area, your living quarters, then you have like your fridge right here, your stove’s in there – they’re working on that right now,” said Dakota Carte, one of the students who worked on the project at Carver Career Center in Charleston.

Inside one of the tiny homes built by WV vocational students.

We were standing in the house’s living room during one of the last days of production. The space also served as a kitchen, dining room and bedroom. All in all the structure was little bigger than a generous walk-in closet.

But it’s much better than what many of the recipients lived in all summer.

Rivers is a retired nurse who lived in her home beside the Greenbrier River for 18 years. During the flood, she, her dog and cat evacuated in a tiny camper to a neighbor’s driveway up the hill. There was 6 inches of mud on the floor and watermarks 2 feet up the wall when she returned to the house several days later.

She said after the flood she thought she might be able to clean up and move back in. But it quickly became evident that just hosing the mud off wasn’t an option. Not only was the foundation knocked off kilter, she said, but the mud hardened to a concrete-like substance that had to be scrubbed, rather than sprayed, off.

“We had to carry everything out and put it in a dump truck…so my whole life was like thrown out there,” she said.

Rivers was unable to find rental property that would take her dog or allow her to sign a month-to-month lease so she moved her camper onto the back of her daughter’s property and lived there for the summer – moving into the living room when it became too cold to continue living outside.

A student works on a tiny home at Marion County Technical Center. Marion County was the only school that built more than one home (they produced 4).

She said living with her daughter and five grandchildren permanently isn’t a great option – the kids are homeschooled and it’s a pretty chaotic house, she explained.

The hope was that the flood victims would be in the homes by Christmas. That goal was not quite met – partially because although a majority of the homes were finished before the holiday, the local relief agencies still needed to coordinate building a concrete foundation for the homes. They also needed to make sure that electric, water and sewer hookups were available, which is a bit of a longer process. Rivers said she hopes to be in her new home within a week or two, though. When all that is ready, the local National Guard will transport the structures to their new locations.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.