West Virginia Capitol Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

First Special Education Day Raises Awareness Of Lack Of Staff

Special education instructors, students and their families gathered at the Capitol Wednesday to advocate for more support in their classrooms during the first ever Special Education Day.

Special education instructors, students and their families gathered at the Capitol Wednesday to advocate for more support in their classrooms during the first ever Special Education Day. Organizers filled the lower rotunda with students from Kanawha County’s self-contained classrooms.

Blaire Malkin, a staff attorney at Mountain State Justice, said these are students with the most complex needs who need the most support day in and day out. Malkin is also president of the board of Exceptional Possibilities of West Virginia, a nonprofit that creates and advocates for events and resources for individuals with disabilities and their families. She said the day is meant to raise awareness of special education needs.

“It’s a chance for special education teachers, aides and students to come to the legislature and promote the need for more special education teachers and aides in the state and also get the students a chance to see how our state government works,” Malkin said

She further highlighted the shortages in special education classrooms, noting some unintended consequences of education legislation passed last year.

“When the legislature passed the Third Grade Success Act last year, it required aides in all first-grade classrooms,” Malkin said. “So nearly half of special education aides left special education for those jobs, because those jobs are frankly easier and pay slightly more.”

Rachel Brown is a special education curriculum specialist for Kanawha County Schools. Kanawha County Schools is the state’s largest school district with more than 23,000 students enrolled, accounting for close to 10 percent of the state’s public school enrollment. Brown works closely with the county’s self-contained classrooms.

“Out of my 66 classrooms, half of my classrooms are staffed with long term substitute teachers, or alternative certification candidates,” she said. “We have untrained teachers, and we do have a strong alternative certification system in Kanawha County schools, but you’re getting your training on the job.”

Brown is also one of the lead organizers for Special Education Day at the Capitol. She says the unintended impact of the Third Grade Success Act on special education classrooms is set to worsen in the coming years.

“A lot of my aides in Kanawha County Schools have moved to first grade,” Brown said. “Next year, all of our second-grade classrooms are going to have aides as well. In the following year, third grade is going to be staffed with aides. It’s decimated my population of aides in my classrooms, and they are essential for my classroom success. Our students need a lot of care.”

Brown hopes a proposed pay raise of 10 percent for self-contained teachers and 5 percent for self-contained aides in SB 680, introduced by Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, can help keep special ed educators in their classrooms.

“I hope this shines a light for legislators,” she said. “A lot of the common public doesn’t know about my type of classrooms, we are the 1 percent. And it’s easy to just shut the door and not even notice they’re in schools. And we want to raise awareness and make sure that the legislature knows about our students and our needs.”

Brown says Special Education Day made history by bringing the most people with disabilities ever to the Capitol at one time.

“I wanted to have a day for the students,” she said. “I also wanted the legislature to be able to see our students. The Capitol is a beautiful place, our state capitol, and they don’t get to get out and do a lot of things. This gives them the opportunity to come here and just be a part of session.”

Geospatial Professionals Raise Awareness About Their Field

Geospatial professionals gathered at the West Virginia Capitol on Wednesday to raise public awareness about their field.

Geospatial professionals from across West Virginia gathered at the Capitol today to teach the public about their field.

Geospatial science is colloquially known as the study of “where,” and examines geography trends. Plus, it can be applied across industries, according to Taryn Moser, state geographic information system (GIS) coordinator with the West Virginia Office of GIS Coordination.

“We are not just maps,” Moser explained. “We work in real estate. We work in banking and business. We work in the DNR. There’s a wide spectrum of disciplines here today, and a wide spectrum of geographic data within the state of West Virginia.”

Today’s displays showed how geospatial science helps professionals make informed decisions in fields like geology and meteorology. Meryl Friedrich, who works for the Division of Natural Resources, said it even helps identify regional trends in wildlife conservation.

“We’ve been doing a lot of citizen science surveys, where we allow the public to report any animals that they see,” Friedrich explained. “Specifically, box turtles, fireflies, hellbenders and mud puppies and river otters are the ones we’re looking at now.”

Friedrich said that the DNR uses geospatial science to analyze trends in citizen science reporting. “It’s really great to get the public involved in those projects,” she added.

Moser and Friedrich both said they hope today’s session helped West Virginians better understand the geospatial resources and opportunities available to them. To view some of these resources, residents can visit the Office of GIS Coordination website.

Group Demands W.Va. Governor, Education Leaders Start School Virtually This Fall

A coalition of teachers and public school advocates are asking for West Virginia schools to start remotely for the first 14 days with in-person instruction beginning only after 14 consecutive days of no new coronavirus cases in the state.

The Our Students First Coalition also wants state officials to allow students to return to in-person learning – on a county-by-county basis – if cases drop to zero in certain areas.

The group held a demonstration and press conference outside the West Virginia Education building in Charleston Wednesday to advocate for remote learning at the start of the 2020 school year.

“We hear over and over, [students] are safest in the school, but I disagree,” said Jenny Anderson, co-head of the Our Students First Coalition, as their protest was broadcast over Facebook Live. “They’re not safest in the school now. They could be. But not now.”

About a dozen members of the group stood together on the Capitol lawn, six feet apart, wearing masks and holding poster boards that represented desks in a classroom – giving a visual example of what classrooms might look like if the school year begins in person, as planned.

“There are going to be teachers that get sick and other school staff,” Anderson said. “It’s not fair to put the burden on the people that are not making the decisions.”

The coalition has more than 5,000 followers made up of members from the WV United Caucus, the Families Leading Change West Virginia group and others, according to Anderson. The group is also partnered with several groups, including local chapters of the American Federation of Teachers and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.

Jay O’Neal also leads the coalition alongside Anderson. He is an educator in Kanawha County and pointed to safety concerns including ventilation. He said many schools in West Virginia are too old and not ready to accommodate in-person schooling without first updating ventilation systems.

“I teach at Westside Middle School. I teach in a building that’s 80 years old, [and] a lot of the windows don’t open,” O’Neal said. “The air conditioning just recycles air from the classroom. It doesn’t pull in any outside air … so we’re concerned.”

Other speakers chimed in, pleading for the state’s leaders to take more time to not only better equip classrooms and school buildings but also perfect remote learning in a state where broadband is not always reliable.

O’Neal said the coalition submitted more than 1,700 letters about these issues to Gov. Jim Justice and state education leaders who so far advocate for a hybrid of in-person and remote learning this fall.

The governor and state leaders, however, have said that should school need to go totally virtual this fall, they are prepared to accept that scenario.

“We absolutely will do everything in our power to not put our kids and our teachers or our service personnel into any situation that we feel is unsafe,” said Justice on Monday. “We may very well back up and say we can’t go to school now, [and] we’ve got to go 100 percent virtual … I’m telling you, this situation changes, not weekly or monthly; this situation changes almost hourly.”

Other demands by the Our Students First Coalition include training for parents and educators in virtual schooling, waiving the 180-instructional-days requirement for the 2020/2021 school year, and providing regular, free and widespread coronavirus testing for staff and students.

West Virginia’s public schools are slated to begin in-person instruction, with virtual options, as ordered by the governor, on Sept. 8.

November 20, 1831: Banker John Q. Dickinson Born in Virginia

Banker and saltmaker John Q. Dickinson was born in Virginia on November 20, 1831. During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army. He was a prisoner of war for the last year of the conflict.

After the war, Dickinson ventured to the Kanawha Valley and rebuilt the salt furnace his grandfather had started at Malden in 1832, which had been partially destroyed by the flood of 1861 and then finished off by Union troops.

In 1867, he and his father, William Dickinson Jr., established the Kanawha Valley Bank in Charleston. John Q. Dickinson succeeded his father as bank president in 1882 and served for more than 40 years. Under his leadership, the bank became the largest financial institution in Charleston.

Dickinson acquired extensive holdings of coal, gas, and oil properties in Boone, Kanawha, Fayette, and Raleigh counties. He also was the first director of the West Virginia Bankers Association and the Kanawha Coal Operators Association.

John Quincy Dickinson died in Charleston in 1925 at age 94. His family saltworks continued to operate several more years until the Great Depression wiped out the business.

Muslim Civil Rights Group Accepts Invite to W.Va. Capitol

The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization says it has accepted an invitation from West Virginia lawmakers to visit the state Capitol in the wake of an Islamophobic display outside the House of Delegates chamber.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations made the announcement Wednesday in a statement that didn’t indicate when the visit would take place.

Wayne County Democrat Ken Hicks wrote a March 8 letter signed by other delegates to CAIR national board chair Roula Allouch extending the invitation.

A poster falsely connected a U.S. congresswoman to the 2001 U.S. terrorist attacks and was part of a group’s March 1 display during the legislature’s “GOP Day.” The poster bore an image of the burning World Trade Center juxtaposed with a picture of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American and one of the first Muslim congresswomen ever elected.

Iconic Rotunda Chandelier Dismantled for Dome Restoration

For more than 85 years, the West Virginia Capitol building has housed the iconic crystal chandelier, illuminating the rotunda for generations of lawmakers and visitors who pass below — its presence a fixture in the statehouse.

But now, it’s been taken down.

Time and water damage has taken its toll over the years, corroding the wires that support the Capitol’s inner dome, making it sag. It’s not obvious, but the inner dome is actually a false ceiling suspended from cables, hanging between the main dome and the four thousand pound chandelier below.

“Part of the problem we’ve had with the dome; water as it rains does not necessarily stay on the outside of the dome,” noted John Myers, Secretary to the West Virginia Department of Administration, “It does come into the interior part. But there are drains made to take that water away; over a period of 60, 80, 100 years, those drains have deteriorated to the point that water is now leaking into the interior dome.”

A company called Acu-Bright specializes in chandelier cleaning and restoration. They’ve been charged to care for the fixture until it can be returned to its home under the dome.

“We’re gonna take off all the crystal panels; protect them, pack them up; take the framework apart, then we’re gonna take the inside of the body where all the lights and the framework that holds the lights out; then we’re gonna remove the column, take all those brass pieces out, take down the pipe, so now it’s ready for people to put up the scaffolding, and nothing will get damaged,” explained Keith Campbell, owner of Acu-Bright.

The crystal in the rotunda chandelier is known as Czechoslovakian crystal; a high quality glass that’s known for its brilliance but also lead content. The base component in crystal is silica, the same as in regular glass — but crystal is partially composed of lead oxide. This gives it greater clarity and sparkle.

The age and uniqueness of the rotunda chandelier’s more than ten thousand pieces make repair and replacement almost impossible.

“You just can’t get parts for these types of fixtures anymore,” Campbell noted.

Once Campbell’s team is done dismantling and packing up the chandelier, it will be transported to an undisclosed location where it will be examined, cleaned, rewired and stored until its return in two years.

Secretary Myers says the main rotunda will eventually be blocked off and scaffolding will be erected so that restoration can begin.

So for now, the rotunda is dark, lit by only a few work lights and scattered beams of sunlight from the porticoes above.

Below, lawmakers pass underneath, occasionally glancing up into the void where the chandelier used to be.

Special Thanks to John Myers, Secretary to the Department of Administration; Keith Campbell, President of Acu-Bright; William Barry, General Service Division; Diane Holley-Brown, Director of Communications, Department of Administration; and Perry Bennett, West Virginia Legislative Photography.