The West Virginia Department of Education Story Archives

Foster Student Suspended More Often Than Peers According To Report

Students in foster care are suspended from school significantly more often than other students according to a presentation by the state Department of Education to the Joint Standing Committee of Education.

The data was previously presented to the West Virginia Board of Education in May.

Georgia Hughes-Webb, director of data analysis & research for the West Virginia Department of Education highlighted the disciplinary outcomes for foster students.

“This slide was particularly upsetting for me when I put it together,” she said.

The data showed that more than a third of all foster care students were referred for a disciplinary incident, and one out of every four foster care students was suspended from school in the 22 school year.

“More than the overall population when foster care kids got in trouble, they were pretty much guaranteed a suspension,” Hughes-Webb said.

Specifically she said 73 percent of foster care students who were referred for discipline ended up getting a suspension, compared with 55 percent for students who are not in foster care.

Del. Heather Tully, R-Nicholas, asked how outcomes for this group can be improved, and asked if contacting caseworkers was part of the disciplinary process.

Drew McClanahan, director of Leadership Development for the West Virginia Department of Education, said schools have to do a better job of identifying who foster care students are.

“We have situations where maybe a school doesn’t know that that child is in foster care,” he said. “We’re working on general information to provide to principals, secretaries, whoever it may be as far as onboarding, what questions to ask and what supports may be there because if it’s the first time that you’ve had a foster care student in your building, you may not know who the caseworker is or how to contact and whatnot.”

McClanahan said the study has allowed the Department of Education to identify gaps in the school support system for foster care students that can now be addressed.

Several lawmakers focused on the role of alternative learning centers as a place to isolate disruptive students.

Del. Dana Ferrell, R-Kanawha, asked about the cost of this approach, pointing out the requirement of not only a salaried teacher but also potentially an entirely separate building depending on how a county chose to structure their center.

McClanahan agreed that cost is a factor for schools and districts, and highlighted some other options that have been explored.

“Looking at doing an in-school suspension alternative, looking at doing some sort of restorative practices, we have seen districts that have looked to choose counseling programs, counseling referrals, both in school and out of school meetings and legitimate conversations and working relationships with parents and parent organizations,” he said.

Last month, the Department of Education launched a public, statewide dashboard on ZoomWV to promote transparency and accountability around school discipline.

Ferrell questioned the wisdom of making that data public.

“I really am concerned with that,” he said. “A few years back, we had a suggestion that schools be given a letter grade A, B, C, D. That was quickly pulled back and done away with because from an economic development standpoint, who wants to locate their family and a business, an area where that school has a disproportionate amount of discipline issues?”

McClanahan likened the disclosure to posting test scores.

“This is in the spirit of transparency to make sure that we have a clear understanding of exactly what’s going on inside of our public schools, that members inside of that community deserve to understand what is going on,” he said.

Board Of Education Hears Updates On School Discipline

Educational leaders have expressed concern about a legislative change to school discipline that makes it easier to suspend a student.

At the Wednesday meeting of the West Virginia Board of Education, Board President Paul Hardesty called a new requirement introduced by House Bill 2890 a “train wreck waiting to happen.”

The bill was written to give school teachers and administrators more leeway in school discipline, but the statute mandates that students be suspended if removed from a classroom three times in one month.

Hardesty said he’s concerned the law doesn’t define why a student would be removed, and that inexperienced teachers might remove students without cause.

“We have special needs teachers that have specializations, that have training to know what to look for in this child with this type of deficiencies and behavioral patterns,” he said. “We take a long term sub and put them in a classroom that has no training. Now we give them the capacity to become arbitrary and capricious in their actions for a child to get a finite result of being kicked out of school. It may be well intended but you’re not hitting what you’re shooting at.”

School discipline data presented by the West Virginia Department of Education to the board earlier this year showed that the state’s students already lose a collective 178,000 instructional days to suspensions.

Drew McClanahan, director of leadership development for the state Department of Education, presented the board with an update to the Student Behavior Response Plan that resulted from the May study. He identified three areas that comprise the focus of the plan: training and support, accountability and policy.

“With the training support piece, I am excited to announce that we’ve been looking at data practices for school administrators,” McClanahan said. “Root cause analyses have been a part of supports and trainings that we provided throughout the summer. We’ve had some best practices related to classroom management, engagement and structural quality.”

McClanahan also reported his office is working with the Behavior Technical Assistance Center at Marshall University to expand training and support for educators. He also announced that the public, statewide dashboard announced at the May board meeting and meant to promote transparency and accountability around school discipline is ready.

“We believe that it will give the public an opportunity to see what types of discipline are being used at a school,” McClanahan said. “We hope that that gives the community an active opportunity to have meaningful conversations with school administrators on what’s being used at their school.”

The discipline dashboard can be found in the state’s ZoomWV information portal.

Tackling The Teacher Shortage And Reducing Our Carbon Footprint This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, our radio series “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force” as Chris Schulz looks at what is being done to address the staffing issues.

Also, Huntington mayor Steve Williams plans to run for West Virginia governor and the Allegheny Front has suggestions to save money and energy.

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 Concord University and Shepherd University.

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

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.

State Deputy Superintendent Discusses Post-Pandemic Education Recovery

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and West Virginia had some of the lowest scores in the country.Deputy Superintendent Michele Blatt spoke with reporter Chris Schulz about what the results mean for education in West Virginia.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Sometimes referred to as “nape” scores, it’s a nationwide measurement of learning, particularly reading and math in the 4th and 8th grades, and West Virginia had some of the lowest scores in the country.

Deputy Superintendent Michele Blatt spoke with reporter Chris Schulz about what the results mean for education in West Virginia.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Schulz: Deputy Blatt, thank you so much for joining me. Could you start off by telling me what was your reaction to seeing the NAEP data come out?

Blatt: Well, the NAEP scores further highlighted concerns that we already had based on our review of our general summative assessment from the end of last school year. We knew we would most likely see a decline. We were a little surprised at how much of the decline we saw, but overall, we were not expecting good results just based on looking at our summative assessment from that previous year as well.

Schulz: What can you attribute these results to?

Blatt: You know, to begin with coming out of the COVID pandemic, and the loss of in person instruction was a huge hit on the scores across all of the states. There’s no replacement for a teacher in front of a student, and that ongoing interaction and relationships that we have in our classrooms. While we provided virtual instruction when our schools were shut down, we know that so many of our students do not have the broadband to even download lessons or to engage on a daily basis.

We also know that it was a huge learning curve for our teachers to just overnight transition to virtual instruction, as opposed to in person instruction. And then thinking of the lack of support that many of our students had in the home. We have a lot of, you know, parents that were working, and students were left alone all day trying to do lessons. We have a lot of students in foster care and various other situations across our state that just without that teacher to support them in their instruction, they were not able to obtain the skills that they would have had they been in the classroom.

Schulz: What does this data tell you about the path forward in West Virginia for education?

Blatt: Well, it tells us that we have a lot of students that we need to get caught up, we have a lot of students with skill deficiencies and skill gaps because of the fact that they did not get that continuous instruction. I think it impacts you know, our younger students. And then even with our eighth grade math scores were our lowest scores across the date. When you miss two and three years of instruction, it’s hard to go back and catch up and to see where those discrepancies are.

It tells me that we need to figure out what skills our students are lacking and where the skill gaps are, and we need to make sure that we can provide the interventions and supports that they need to make up that last instruction.

Schulz: What is an example of one of these skill gaps that you’re referring to?

Blatt: Well, I know at our younger years, we’ve got students that are in third grade, who missed a substantial amount of instruction in their early years of learning to read. So we know we have a lot of students with skill gaps in phonics and fluency comprehension, those areas because they did not have that direct instruction that they needed to learn to read.

Schulz: This isn’t just going to follow our educational structures. This is a community issue more broadly, as I see it, can you tell me what intervention might actually look like?

Blatt: Yes, I would agree with you. One of the things that we have in place is the Communities in Schools Initiative, that is a program that puts a site coordinator in the building to help take care of all the basic needs and safety needs of our students so that our teachers do have more time to focus on teaching and they’re not the ones trying to provide the basic needs as well as if the academic instruction the students need.

But we’re going to need everyone to rally around. We’re going to need to focus really on what it is these students need, working with parents, providing parents with resources that they need to be able to support their students in the evenings and on the weekends. And then also, as you mentioned, community members, any type of mentoring programs or engagement that we can get with our community and business leaders will definitely assist with the issues.

Schulz: One of the things that I heard in the presentation of the data was that COVID-19, and the pandemic didn’t create these issues, but rather highlighted issues in education that already existed. Do you think that that’s also true in West Virginia?

Blatt: I do. We have been focusing for the last couple of years on the fact of how great of a need our students have with social and emotional health and their physical needs. Just as you mentioned, the community that surrounds our schools, and the, in some places, the lack of support for public education, all of those things are definitely something that the pandemic highlighted.

I do think there’s a positive in that the pandemic did highlight the importance of our schools and in-person learning, because that’s the place, the school is the place where the students are getting the meals that they need, the instruction that they need, maybe the mental health counseling, behavior, assistance and all of those things. So if there is a positive that came out of it, it’s that I feel more people did see the value of our public school system and all the support that we provide.

Eleven W.Va. Counties Will Be Remote, Virtual School This Week

The West Virginia Department of Education announced that eleven counties will be remote learning-only for the week of Nov. 8. State officials rolled out updated data Saturday, Nov. 7 at 11:20 p.m. — more than six hours later than usual. The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources told West Virginia Public Broadcasting the delay was “due to further data validation.”

Hampshire, Jackson, Lincoln, Marshall, Ohio, Putnam, Tyler, Wood and Wyoming counties, which were in the orange zone on the state’s color-coded map, will not be open for in-person instruction this week.

Mineral and Mingo were the only counties in the red category and will also be remote learning-only.

The COVID-19 Data Review Panel also announced that seven counties shifted in their color zones. They included:

Berkeley County: Moved from orange to gold based on additional testing results received and a reduced positivity rate.
Lewis County: Moved from gold to yellow due to data validation and three cases being removed due to case status updated and one case removed due to outbreak information being updated.
Marion County: Moved from green to yellow due to data validation and one case being added due to outbreak information being updated.
Marshall County: Moved from red to orange due to data validation of 11 nursing home residents excluded and transfer of three cases to correct county of residence.
Monroe County: Moved from gold to yellow due to data validation and one nursing home resident excluded.
Morgan County: Moved from yellow to gold due to additional testing results received.
Randolph County: Moved from gold to yellow due to data validation of ten college students isolating in dorms excluded and transfer of three cases to correct county of residence.

Red (Substantial Community Transmission): Remote-only learning mode. No extracurricular competitions or practices are permitted. Staff may report to their schools, as determined by the county. Essential support services, including special education and meals, will continue. Counties in red include: Mineral, Mingo

Orange (Heightened Community Transmission): Remote-only learning mode. Extracurricular practices may occur, however, competitions may not. Staff may report to their schools, as determined by the county. Essential support services, including special education and meals, will continue. Counties in orange include: Hampshire, Jackson, Lincoln, Marshall, Ohio, Putnam, Tyler, Wood, Wyoming

Gold (Elevated Community Transmission): In-person instruction is permitted with restrictions, including face coverings at all times for grades 3-12. Extracurricular activities are permitted. Competitions can take place against schools within the same county as well as schools in other gold counties. Counties in gold include: Berkeley, Jefferson, Morgan, Pleasants, Wetzel, Wirt

Yellow (Increased Community Transmission): School may be held for in-person instruction. Extracurricular practices and competitions may occur. Health and safety precautions include, at a minimum, face coverings at all times for grades six and above. Please refer to your county for specific face covering requirements. Counties in yellow include: Boone, Cabell, Clay, Fayette, Kanawha, Lewis, Marion, McDowell, Monroe, Preston, Randolph, Ritchie, Upshur, Wayne

Green (Minimal Community Transmission): School may be held for in-person instruction. Extracurricular practices and competitions may occur. Health and safety precautions include, at a minimum, face coverings in grades three and above when students are outside of core groups and in congregant settings and on school buses. Please refer to your county for specific face covering requirements. Counties in green include: Barbour, Braxton, Brooke, Calhoun, Doddridge, Gilmer, Grant, Greenbrier, Hancock, Hardy, Harrison, Logan, Mason, Mercer, Monongalia, Nicholas, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Raleigh, Roane, Summers, Taylor, Tucker, Webster

All schools, both public and private, are expected to adhere to the WVDE’s re-entry map to guide in-person instruction and extracurricular activities.

Updates to the map are usually announced each Saturday at 5 p.m. and will be in effect until the following Saturday at the same time, according to the WVDE. The only exception would be if a county turns red during the week.

If this happens, the change would be made immediately to the map, according to the WVDE, and all in-person instruction and extracurricular and athletic activities would be suspended.

As of Saturday morning, DHHR reports 27,742 total cases of the virus and 502 deaths — 15 of those deaths were announced on Saturday alone. At least 6,454 cases are considered active, according to DHHR.