Monongalia County Schools Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Monongalia County Tech Center EMT Students Win State Championship, Head To Nationals

In West Virginia’s first SkillsUSA Emergency Medical Technician competition, Gabriella Chico and Olivia Tennant from Monongalia County’s Technical Education Center (MTEC) bested all competitors and were named state champions.

SkillsUSA is a national organization with a stated mission of empowering its members to become world-class workers, leaders and responsible American citizens. The vocational enhancement group states it works to improve the quality of the nation’s future skilled workforce through the development of framework skills that include personal, workplace and technical skills grounded in academics.

Moving through local, regional and state competition, Chico and Tennant participated in a written exam and psychomotor skills testing, similar to what they will perform next year for their National Registry for Emergency Medical Technician Certification. They demonstrated first responder skills such as bleeding control, CPR, airway management in a full patient scenario.

State EMS Director Jody Ratliff is still challenged with low EMT and paramedic workforce numbers. He recently met with the student winners and said he was impressed by Chico and Tennant’s skill and enthusiasm.

“We went through a bunch of skills with them when they showed us what they did,” Ratliff said. “It was exciting to see two young ladies in high school, excited about EMS and wanting to get other high school students involved in EMS. If we can get them when they’re in high school and bring them out and put them through classes, that makes me excited.”

This was the first year for the EMT program at MTEC. It’s a two-year program for Monongalia County high school juniors and seniors where they can complete the required coursework, perform clinical requirements, and go through the testing process to obtain their National Registry Emergency Medical Technician Certification.

The center said the funding for this program was made possible from the governor’s initiative “Answer the Call,” meant to encourage EMT and paramedic recruitment and retention.

Ratliff said 2022-23 was the first time in at least 11 years that EMS gained personnel in West Virginia.

“We gained 391 EMT’s, 22 AMT’s and 109 paramedics,” Ratliff said. “We did lose 190 people, you’re gonna have people retire. But we gained more than what we lost.”

Chico and Tennant will go on to represent the Monongalia County Technical Education Center and West Virginia in the SkillsUSA EMT National competition held in Atlanta next month.

Bus Driver Shortage Persists Statewide

West Virginia has not been immune to a countrywide shortage of certified bus drivers to provide transportation for students. The problem and its solution lies with each county and its school system.

David Barber is the director of transportation for the West Virginia Department of Education. He said the state averages around 4,000 bus drivers, but only has just more than 3,700 currently working.

“There’s a lot of factors and there is no true fix for this,” Barber said. “We’ve had a lot of retirements over the last few years. Unfortunately, we lost some bus operators and different employees to COVID.”

As with other industries, COVID-19 lockdowns caused many veteran workers to reassess their situation, and take retirement earlier than planned.

Barber said there’s not much the state Department of Education can do, but points towards a statewide effort to bring retired drivers, as well as drivers licensed in other states, to West Virginia.

“We’ve had some retired bus operators that want to come back to work, and so we’ve modified our training guidelines to allow that without them having to go through an entire training program,” he said. “We didn’t modify anything to compromise the safety of the training or anything.”

However, at the November meeting of the West Virginia Board of Education, Barber reported that the statewide waiver of Policy 4336 has so far only led to 16 bus drivers coming out of retirement or transferring their out of state certification. Ultimately, Barber said it’s up to each county to recruit, train and hire their own drivers.

Brette Fraley is the executive director of transportation for Kanawha County Schools, the state’s largest school system with more than 22,000 students. He said part of the issue in his area is the county faces competition from other industries when replacing retiring drivers.

“What they call the missing piece is those folks that are older getting ready to retire and how to replace those folks,” Fraley said. “Here in the county, if you’re a bus driver you have an opportunity to become a truck driver. You move from a 200-day employee to 261-day employee. You start to gain vacation, you get an increase in pay, and more flexibility. We lose a lot of our drivers within the county, and then we lose drivers to competitors because there’s more money available.”

Fraley said it’s not just an issue in transportation, but in education and support staff compensation more broadly. With unemployment at a historic low, things are getting competitive.

“Going forward, we have to be competitive to keep those employees, not just bus drivers, our electricians or plumbers, or teachers or cooks or custodians,” Fraley said. “It takes everybody to get these kids to school, and keep them in school.”

Fraley said his system has about 30 vacancies right now, but more than 20 people are already in training. He also said driver shortages are nothing new and the county’s transportation department works to reduce interruptions as much as possible.

“Most of our drivers are working hard together and working as a team, sharing responsibility,” Fraley said. “Not only that, they’re sharing responsibility between terminals and helping each other out, getting the kids where they need to be on a timely basis, covering all their field trips.”

Eddie Campbell is Monongalia County’s superintendent of schools. With about 11,500 students, the Monongalia school district is roughly half of Kanawha’s size, but Campbell said transportation logistics are difficult regardless of a system’s size.

“I’ve been a superintendent now for 12 years,” Campbell said. “In my previous county, when I was in Tucker County, a much smaller system, we only had 12 drivers. But you still dealt with the issue of personnel and the substitute piece of it. Bus driving is difficult, it’s a hard job.”

According to Campbell, the Monongalia County initially had to cancel bus services for some extracurriculars. More recently, however, he said the county has had to cancel regular routes about a dozen times this school year. Each time, that burden falls to parents to get their students to activities or to school itself.

Campbell said Monongalia’s biggest issue right now is its substitute pool, but that issue itself is a symptom of the bus driver shortage.

“Because there’s such turnover in the regular drivers, the ones that hold those full time positions, many times we’ll train two or three drivers, and once they’ve completed their coursework, and they’re certified as a bus driver, they walk directly, immediately into a full time job,” Campbell said. “They don’t even go into the substitute pool, because there’s vacancies already sitting there waiting for them to go ahead and take a full-time job and so then that cycle just perpetuates itself.”

Campbell acknowledges that the training itself, while necessary for providing the safest service possible for students, can be its own barrier for potential drivers. Trainees must complete more than 50 hours of coursework and practical training without pay.

“You have to make the commitment to the time and the coursework, the practical driving that you have to do in order to be certified,” Campbell said. “It means you’re giving up time on the other end. So if you do have a job, you’ve got to make arrangements to take the courses. You’ve got to step away from another type of job in order to be able to take that coursework. With that said, the training is essential.”

It’s an issue the state is keeping its eye on. Some counties have already implemented pay for bus driving trainees, but it’s simply not feasible for all counties.

“I think there’s other factors that steer people away from the profession, but for those people that do have a true interest in becoming a bus operator, I do think that offsetting paying them while they’re getting the training would really alleviate some of the burden that these individuals would have in order to try to make ends meet for them,” Campbell said.

For those interested, Fraley has a clear picture of the kind of person best suited for bus driving.

“Our drivers suggest that you be an early riser,” Fraley said. “You enjoy being around children, good communicator, you would have to study and pass written exams, perform and pass driving exams, require a good driving record, no DUIs. A high school diploma, required to pass a drug and alcohol test background check. And you have to be able to maintain your school bus by writing up anything that’s mechanically wrong with it.”

Fraley and the other sources for this story all acknowledge that bus driving is difficult work. Difficult, but rewarding.

“It’s a hard job, but the people that do it find it to be a rewarding job,” Fraley said. “We were talking here recently about the bus drivers that took the Hoover group to the state playoffs and the fact that they were part of something that would allow those students memories for the rest of their life.”

Those interested in becoming a school bus driver should contact their local school district.

Communities, Schools Across West Virginia Come Together To Feed Students

Schools across West Virginia closed Monday, March 16, for at least two weeks in an effort to help stem the transmission of the coronavirus.

Since the shutdown was announced, West Virginians around the state have been working to make sure students are fed. According to the West Virginia Department of Education, more than two-thirds of school-aged children, or more than 183,000, qualify for free or reduced-priced meals.

Mountaineers are getting creative. Some schools are offering curbside food pickups, putting lunches on school busses, and in some communities restaurants, food banks and churches are stepping up.

West Virginians are finding ways to come together in this time where people are being asked to socially distance.

Providing In Wheeling

Word started to get out that schools would likely be closing. That’s when Bob Bailey, who’s had a catering business in the upper Ohio Valley for almost three decades, said he had a sobering moment of realization.

“There are children that their main meal, or their only meal of the day, is their school lunch,” he said.

Bob Bailey put a message out on social media and got a huge response.

Bailey put out a call on social media asking residents of Ohio and Marshall counties to: “please contact my business if a child relies on school lunches for their main meal of the day… I will gladly provide hot meals for children in need.”

In three days, he said more than 600 people responded, many offering to help.

“There were so many people reaching out saying, ‘Do you need money? Do you need people to come help pack lunches? Do you need people to run deliveries?’” he said.

Bailey said he received some financial donations that he’s set aside to defray food costs and that allowed him to buy biodegradable food containers. It didn’t take long to receive requests from families, including one set of grandparents who live nearby and are on a fixed income. They’re watching three grandchildren during the school closures.

“She contacted me yesterday, and she said she doesn’t know how she’s going to feed these children,” Bailey said. “So she came today and she cried, and then she made me cry.”

He said to keep in line with recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control to remain at least six feet apart, the two pretended to hug. He sent her home with meals ready to be made in the microwave or oven.

Wheeling-based caterer Bob Bailey poses near the lunches he put together for kids out of school.

Bailey is already familiar with how to feed a variety of kids. His business, As You Like It Catering, regularly provides school lunches to Montessori’s, learning centers, preschools and elementary schools.

“We’re prepared. We know the right amount of proteins, grains, vegetables and fruits. So we make all of them balanced,” he said. “We have to follow those if we’re going to do the school lunches so we are providing all of that.”

So far, Bailey has put about 300 meals together. He provides families with enough food to last them through the week and sometimes throws in a little extra. He’s gotten additional requests this week and is now also preparing for next week.

Schools Get Creative

Monongalia County Schools are offering curbside lunch pickups.

The state Department of Education is playing a large role in ensuring students across the state’s 55 counties have access to food while school is out. Clayton Burch, state superintendent of schools, said as of Monday, 505 drop sites are serving meals to kids.

In a news release, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a waiver application from the West Virginia Office of Child Nutrition to continue feeding students even though school would not be in session. Burch said they are currently working with the National Guard and other community resources like food pantries on how meals would be distributed.

Each school district has been given leeway to develop a plan that suits their individual needs.

“We asked them in a very short time period to come up with a plan to serve all their children who needed meals,” he said. “In some areas it’s a grab and go where you actually come to the school and pick it up. In other areas they’re actually running school busses to school bus stops, families homes, and I think you’ll see even other places where they’re actually tapping into community resources to get those meals out there.”

In Morgantown, Monongalia County Schools is providing curbside pickup of hot lunches between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Monday through Friday, at all of the district’s 17 schools.

morgantown_for_web.mp3

Listen to reporter Brittany Patterson's dispatch from Morgantown High School.

“During these uncertain times, we’re not sure what will happen from day to day or minute to minute, and this gives, I think, a little bit of comfort to students that they know they can come to their school and still get a school lunch,” said Brian Kiehl, director of child nutrition for Monongalia County schools.

A hot lunch being provided by Monongalia County Schools during school closures.

Kiehl said the staff is still figuring out how many lunches to make each day during the coronavirus closure. They handed out about 400 meals on Monday, more than 900 on Tuesday and about 1,500 on Wednesday. On a normal day they make about 6,500.

In the Eastern Panhandle, schools in Berkeley, Jefferson, Morgan, Mineral, Hampshire, Hardy, Grant and Pendleton counties are all providing their K-12 students free breakfast and lunch through this closure period — regardless of whether they normally receive free meals.

Some counties in the Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands region are offering meals-to-go at all of their school locations — while others have centralized food pick up at specific schools. Additionally, like Morgantown, some counties are offering delivery services by utilizing bus routes.

Officials say students from the Eastern Panhandle region may pick up meals at anyschool in their county offering grab-and-go meals, regardless of whether they attend that school or not.

And at least three counties, Grant, Berkeley and Jefferson, say they’ll feed any child, ages 1-18, if they show up at one of their pick up locations.

Patrick Murphy, Berkeley County superintendent of schools, said schools play a pivotal role in the well-being of their communities.

“I think as a community agency we … have a responsibility to make sure people are safe, and we have the element of being able to provide them meals and nutrition,” he said.

ep_for_web.mp3

Listen to WVPB's Liz McCormick reporting from the Eastern Panhandle.

Specific lists for pick up locations in all eight of the Eastern Panhandle counties are posted on county board websites, can be found via social media or by calling their county education board.

‘We Are Ready’

Across the state, there are also grassroots efforts bubbling up to make sure kids don’t go hungry.

Several Facebook groups have formed to help coordinate these efforts and connect volunteers, faith leaders, bus drivers, school cafeteria workers and local chefs. One group, called WV Food ER, began with two people, but in the past several days, the group has evolved into an effort by more than 2,000 people to assist local school systems ensure that children are being fed.

fooder_for_web.mp3

Listen to reporter Roxy Todd.

“Bus drivers and school service personnel are like all about this,” said Elizabeth Brunello, one of the coordinators of the group. “They see their responsibility to just step forward and it’s pretty amazing to see.”

She said in rural areas, it can be challenging to ensure food is being delivered to children in need.

Communities across the Southern Coalfields know this challenge well. Many have come together to work it out, and many say, this is nothing new.

Welch Elementary School Principal Dr. Kristy East out delivering food to families this week.

“Well, let me tell you, this is McDowell County. We stay in disaster mode every day. So you know, we’re, we are ready,” said Linda McKinney who runs McDowell County’s Five Loaves and Two Fishes food pantry.

McKinney typically serves 1,200 people a month and expects that number to go up. In two days, 76 families requested food, which she said averages to about 500 people. To avoid large gatherings, she is having people pick up food by appointment only.

But getting that food down to the region is not necessarily easy with businesses shutting down and people being advised to stay home. This is where the National Guard comes in. Major Holli Nelson said the guard is collaborating with the West Virginia Department of Education to streamline food distribution throughout the state, but especially to the southern part of the state.

“We are very rural in how our population lives,” Nelson said. “We have a lot of mountains that we have to deal with. There’s connectivity issues, getting the word out of how to best push the information out to those who need it most.”

The Department of Education is also directly collaborating with staff in the coalfields to identify areas of high need, as options like bussing food to kids can be uniquely challenging in the southern region, according to Amanda Harrison, executive director of the Office of Child Nutrition.

“Late last week, our state experienced flooding in certain locations, and so we have to consider safety in terms of routes that are being taken,” she said.

There are also examples of people providing food on a very local level, not in an official state-directed capacity.

southernMP3.mp3

Caitlin Tan reports from the Southern Coalfields.

That includes Spencer’s Catering and Carry-out, also in McDowell County. It is a mom and daughter-owned business that is usually open Friday and Saturday. But this week, manager Ashley Spencer said they provided lunch and home food deliveries Monday and Tuesday, adding that more than 50 kids came in to eat on Monday.

“Their meals at school are the only meals they have, so I definitely wanted to make sure Monday we were ready to go, because they had the weekend and a lot of them didn’t have food,” Spencer said.

In Boone County, Mick Frye, senior pastor of the Fountain of Life Worship Center, said they are providing a free hot lunch for kids and families, no questions asked.

“Spaghetti, we got string cheese, a little bit of yogurt, some carrots and then also, you know, some ice cream, something like that, just something kids like,” Frye said.

The church has a bus ministry that provides free transportation to church service and Frye said that is helping them reach out to families who they know need food right now.

He said he is quite hopeful that kids will get fed in the Southern Coalfields.

“You know, we know poverty, and people have always been willing to reach out and even when times were rough, you know, West Virginia and southern West Virginians have always known how to get through those things because we just come together and help each other,” Frye said.

So although coronavirus is a very new type of crisis to hit the region, many southern West Virginians said this is nothing new, that the resiliency of the communities will help see them through this pandemic and maybe they can even be a model, again, for other communities throughout the country.

This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.