Kanawha County Board of Education Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Kanawha County Textbook Controversy, 50 Years Later

Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of a Kanawha County Board of Education meeting that became inundated with controversy over new, multicultural textbooks.

On April 11, 1974 — 50 years ago Thursday — a meeting of the Kanawha County Board of Education quickly became mired in controversy.

During the meeting, members of the board adopted a new slate of language arts textbooks, in part to promote multiculturalism in the classroom.

But after reviewing the books that had been approved for the new curriculum, board member Alice Moore and several local residents alleged some of them were antithetical to Christian values.

As proponents of the new curriculum stood firm in the board’s decision, others began to stage protests over the books’ inclusion.

Things escalated in the months following the meeting, and even turned toward violence. Some protesters threw dynamite and Molotov cocktails at local school buildings, and even targeted buses with firearms.

Ultimately, a contingent of residents and board members pushed the curriculum through. But some say the incident has parallels to today, as libraries and schools across the country face increased scrutiny over the books they provide youth.

Trey Kay, host of the West Virginia Public Broadcasting podcast Us & Them, produced a documentary on the textbook controversy in 2013.

On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, Kay said 1974 was a year when the country was experiencing “one of its more progressive phases,” which brought forth new, often clashing ideas.

“A lot of things that would have been considered multicultural were society reacting to the changing role of women. Society was reacting to how we were making a correction with regard to civil rights,” he said. “The textbooks were reflecting how it was we thought about our government and how we conducted war.”

Debates seemingly over textbook content were also debates on what place these new values and ideas would have in American society, Kay said.

Five decades later, Kay said that the incident remains an influential memory for West Virginia residents. Perhaps most notably, Kay said a through-line over the years has been parents’ focus on what curricula their children are exposed to.

“The constant is that parents really have a great deal of care over what it is that their children learn,” Kay said. “They’re highly suspicious and vigilant about what the schools are teaching.”

Kanawha County School Board Agrees On ‘West Side Middle School’

The Kanawha County Board of Education voted 3-2 during its meeting Thursday night to rename the former Stonewall Jackson Middle School to West Side Middle School.

“We feel the school should have a name that includes everyone that enters it,” said Camdyn Harris, who lives on Charleston’s West Side and who attends the school.

“We as students do not want to exclude any race that attends the school, both now and in the future,” Harris told school board members.

“We are made up of people with leadership skills, effective communicators, people with good work ethic, competitiveness,” he added. “Yes, there is adversity, but there is everywhere. We have our flaws, but every time we have our flaws we come together as a community and we fix those flaws.”

Board members unanimously agreed almost two weeks earlier to remove Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s name from the building, after hearing requests that evening from more than a dozen community members. The building had carried that name since 1940.

Jackson was one of the most notable figures from the Civil War and he owned several slaves. Nearly half of the students at West Side Middle School are Black, according to data from the West Virginia Department of Education.

Another popular contender for the school’s renaming was Katherine Johnson, a Black West Virginian who worked for 33 years as a mathematician for NASA. Johnson died earlier this year at 101 years old.

A motion to name the school after Johnson failed 2-3. An online survey distributed to students and community members after the July 6 meeting included three other names, but West Side and Johnson’s were the most popular picks.

Before the board’s vote Thursday night, some of the community members who spoke said the survey hadn’t been available long enough and it didn’t get enough feedback.

In Jackson’s birthplace of Clarksburg, Harrison County commissioners voted June 17 against removing a statue of the man, which stands outside the local courthouse.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Over 1,000 Student-Issued iPads are Unaccounted For

About 1,000 iPad tablet computers have not been recovered by a school system in West Virginia over the past three school years.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the Kanawha County Board of Education learned Thursday that 1,269 out of just over 15,000 iPads were not recovered. Officials say the county sees about a 2.8 percent annual loss, with the largest source coming from student transfers.

The school system’s technology director Leah Sparks says the number should decrease as students continue to turn in tablets.

She says starting this year, the tablets will include a new feature allowing the county to pinpoint the location of the device. Eventually, the location of the missing tablets will be given to authorities.

County Board of Education Proposes E-Cigarette Ban

A West Virginia board of education is listening to public comments on a policy revision that would ban e-cigarettes and all substances containing nicotine from property that the school system owns or operates.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the Kanawha County Board of Education put the changes out for public comment Monday. School system General Counsel Jim Withrow says concerns were raised regarding e-cigarettes or vapes that don’t contain tobacco, but have nicotine.

The school system currently has a 1997 policy in place, banning tobacco. The proposed changes would add nicotine and e-cigarettes to the existing tobacco prohibition policy. It would also ban substances containing nicotine from all property that is owned, leased or operated by the school system.

County Board Vows to Rebuild Clendenin Elementary School

Members of the Kanawha County Board of Education promised the community of Clendenin it would rebuild their destroyed elementary school within the community.

Clendenin Elementary sustained the most damage of any school in the county during June’s historic flooding when 97 percent of the structure was damaged.

The board held an emergency meeting at the Clendenin Volunteer Fire Depratment Wednesday evening where Superintendent Dr. Ron Duerring explained children would be bused to Bridge Elementary School in Elkview when classes begin on Monday. There, many teachers will double up in classrooms until portable ones can be delivered in late September or early October.

“Health, safety and education. That’s the three most important things we can do for your kids,” Duerring told parents and teachers at the meeting, but he added those three things cannot be provided in the current building.

Several community members expressed concern over the decision urging the board to move students back into their communities as soon as possible. Many questioned why the portable classrooms needed to be placed on the Bridge Elementary site and could not be located on the Clendenin school’s current property, but parents did not get a clear answer from Duerring.

Despite the repeated pledges from Kanawha County Board of Education members, Clendenin Mayor Gary Bledsoe–who calls the elementary school the heart of his community– still worries the county will rebuild elsewhere.

Bledsoe said Wednesday the school district will have to rely on grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for a new building, but he believes it should be rebuilt on the same property, just raised a few feet to make sure its out of the floodplain.