Wetzel County Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

State Board Of Education Approves More School Closures

School consolidations and closures continue to be the leading issue facing West Virginia education as the West Virginia Board of Education approved the closure of six more schools in four counties at their monthly meeting Wednesday.

Educational leaders from Clay, Preston, Wetzel and Wood counties all told the board declining enrollment, shrinking budgets and aging buildings are contributing factors that require closure and consolidation. A release from the West Virginia Department of Education stated that declining enrollment has led to 25 proposed or approved school closures this year.

The action comes just a month after the board approved the closure of six schools in Kanawha County.

In Preston County, the closure of Fellowsville Elementary School and its merger into South Preston School was approved, as well as the closure of Rowlesburg School and its merger into Aurora School.

In Wetzel County the consolidation of Hundred High School into Valley High School was approved, as well as the consolidation of Paden City High School into Magnolia High School and New Martinsville School.

Much of the public comment at the start of the meeting was directed at the closures in Wetzel County. Paden City High School has been the source of controversy since a court blocked its emergency closure earlier this year.

Like many speakers at meetings before, Charles Goff, mayor of Hundred, West Virginia said the effects of school closures goes far beyond the academic.

“The importance of Hundred High School can’t be summed up in two minutes,” he said. “In fact, most towns die after a closure of a high school. They lose incorporated status, losing elected officials in town, and it leads to fire departments closing and town charters being revoked.”

In Wood County the closure of Fairplain Elementary School and merger into Martin Elementary School; and the closure of Van Devender Middle School and its merger into Jackson Middle School and Hamilton Middle School were approved.

The closure of Clay County Middle School and consolidation into Clay Elementary School, Big Otter Elementary School and Clay County High School was approved, contingent upon West Virginia School Building Authority (SBA) funding for an addition to the high school.

Phillip Dobbins, superintendent of Clay County Schools, told the board the county has lost almost a third of its enrolled students in less than 10 years.

“Our projections show the grim reality that our enrollment will continue to decline,” he said. “Next year’s numbers project our total enrollment to be at 1375 total students, that’s down from 1,999 in 2016.”

He said the consolidation of Clay Middle School into existing county schools will save $500,000 in operational costs.

Victor Gabriel, board vice president, asked Dobbins to quantify the financial loss such a decline represents.

“According to our treasurer, state aid formula’s about $7,500 per student,” Dobbins said. “So, do the math, it’s several million dollars that we’re down.”

Gabriel went on to urge the legislature to revise the funding formula for West Virginia’s schools.

“It hasn’t been done for years and years and years,” he said. “As a former educator, I saw this evolve. We just don’t have the money, people. And it’s getting worse. Every time we lose students, we lose dollars. It all equates to dollars. And I mean, I don’t know how you resolve that.”

Gabriel said that counties still have to pay staff and to maintain buildings with ever-dwindling funding. He said student enrollment across the state is down 4,000 from last year, representing close to $30 million in lost funding for local schools.

Judge Reverses School Closure Less Than Three Weeks Before Classes Resume

A Wetzel County circuit court judge has reversed the closure of Paden City High School, first ordered by the county superintendent under health concerns in June.

A circuit court judge has blocked the closure of a Wetzel County High School.

In June, Wetzel County Superintendent of Schools Cassandra Porter ordered the closure of Paden City High School (PCHS) under West Virginia Code § 18-4-10(5), citing conditions detrimental to health, safety or welfare of students.

On Wednesday, Wetzel County Circuit Court Judge C. Richard Wilson reversed the closure and prohibited Porter from closing the school after a petition for injunctive relief was filed by faculty, staff, parents and Paden City community members.

In his order, Wilson said groundwater contamination exists throughout Paden City from drycleaning chemicals including perchloroethylene (PCE). This contamination has led the city to use air strippers to filter PCE out of municipal water, as well as adding Paden City to the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) list of Superfund sites in 2022.

However, Wilson stated in his order that no evidence of PCE being present in indoor air at concentrations above allowable EPA standards was presented to the court. In the order, Wilson cites testimony from Douglas Snider, an expert for the petitioners, that the highest sampling of PCE in indoor air in PCHS was reported at 0.02 parts per billion.

The order also states the EPA did not recommend the closure of the school and that its closure prompted an update to the agency’s website stating that “results consistently indicate there is no unacceptable risk to students.”.

Wilson went on to note that during the 2023-2024 school year, the Wetzel County Board of Education held public meetings to discuss the merger of PCHS with Magnolia High School. The board voted 5-0 to not close PCHS in September 2023.

Porter testified that the school closure was temporary, but that she did not know when the school would reopen and that “conditions at PCHS ‘could be’ detrimental to the health and safety of the population.” Wilson also cited that Porter “conceded during her testimony that she did not have any such testing or evaluation conducted at Magnolia High School.”

Wilson concluded that Porter did not have the statutory authority to close PCHS, and that the closure of the school “may jeopardize and threaten its students with eligibility to play in sports and be members of a marching band.”

PCHS was ordered to re-open immediately and be kept open “as if it never closed” with” all teachers, staff and faculty to be reinstated.” Wilson also ordered the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission to allow Paden City students to participate in activities normally.

The first day of school for Wetzel County Schools is Aug. 19.

W.Va. School Remains Open Amid Toxic Groundwater Fears

A small West Virginia school will remain open for now after a court temporarily blocked an effort to relocate classes due to the town’s contaminated groundwater being added to a national cleanup priority list.

Last month, Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Cassandra R. Porter announced that students, faculty and staff at Paden City High School would be relocated to existing schools in nearby New Martinsville when classes resume in August.

However, attorneys representing a group of those students, faculty and staff filed a petition this week seeking to block the move, according to news outlets. The petition argued that the federal government did not recommend closing the school because there was no health risk and that closing the school would “devastate” the community.

“Based upon the petition, there appears to be no emergency, the status of Paden City as a Superfund Site has been known for many years and these conditions are not unforeseen or unanticipated,” Circuit Judge Richard Wilson wrote in his Friday ruling.

Wilson ordered that the school’s teachers, staff and faculty be reinstated and that the school immediately reopen.

A hearing has been scheduled on July 25 to determine if the school will remain open.

In March 2022, federal environmental officials placed Paden City’s groundwater on the list of Superfund cleanup sites. Untreated groundwater contained the solvent tetrachloroethylene at levels higher than the federally allowed limit.

Tetrachloroethylene is widely used by dry cleaners. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the contaminated area is around the site of a dry cleaner that closed more than two decades ago in the Ohio River town of about 2,500 residents.

According to the EPA, tetrachloroethylene is a likely carcinogen and can harm the nervous system, liver, kidneys and reproductive system.

A Week After Mountain Valley Pipeline Burst, Builder Says Testing Works

Initially, the only way the public knew about the incident was because a landowner reported the sediment-laden water had inundated her property to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.

A week after a section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline ruptured during testing, its builder says the failure shows the testing is working as designed and intended.

Part of the pipe burst on May 1 at Bent Mountain in Roanoke County, Virginia, releasing an unknown quantity of municipal water used to pressure test the line.

Initially, the only way the public knew about the incident was because a landowner reported the sediment-laden water had inundated her property to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.

For days, the pipeline’s builder and the state and federal regulators supervising the project said little about the rupture.

On Wednesday, Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Equitrans Midstream, said the company notified state and federal regulators about the rupture and that the released water had dissipated by the next day.

“There were no injuries reported, and all appropriate state and federal agencies were notified,” she said. “By Thursday morning, the released water had dissipated and temporarily affected tributaries had returned to pre-hydrotesting conditions.”

Cox said the company has resumed hydrostatic testing of the pipeline, including where it ruptured, and has successfully completed the process on 269 miles of the route.

Cox added that no other sections had failed and that last week’s failure proves the testing works. The damaged section will be sent to a laboratory for analysis, she said.

“Importantly, the disruption of this one hydrotest does, in fact, demonstrate that the testing process is working as designed and intended,” she said.

The 303-mile, 42-inch diameter pipeline, which stretches from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia, has been one of the most contested fossil fuel infrastructure projects of recent years.

The pipeline’s construction began in 2018 and was periodically paused because of court challenges. Last year, Congress required, as part of a spending deal, that the pipeline be completed.

If the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approves the pipeline to begin operating in the coming weeks, the $7.85 billion project will have more than doubled in cost.

Equitrans Midstream has asked FERC to approve the pipeline’s operation by May 23. On Wednesday, a group of 18 Virginia lawmakers sent FERC a letter asking them to deny the request.

Since October, the Mountain Valley Pipeline has been under an agreement with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to ensure sections of pipe maintained their integrity after they were exposed to weather during the long pauses in construction activity.

Pipeline opponents warned the exposure may have degraded the pipe’s corrosion-resistant coating.

When it starts operating, the pipeline will carry as much as 2 billion cubic feet a day of gas.

Tate reported this story from Floyd, Virginia.

W.Va. 911 Centers File Complaint Against Frontier Communications

The agency tasked with operating West Virginia’s 911 centers has filed a complaint against Frontier West Virginia Inc.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission was asked Wednesday to investigate a complaint against Frontier Communications that 10 emergency call centers were unable to field 911 calls for up to 10 hours during a three day period last month.

According to the complaint the WVE911 Council, the umbrella agency that operates 911 centers in the state, alleges that within the past 24 months, several Public-Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) within the state have experienced lengthy outages of 911 service.

The most recent outage was from Nov. 28 through Nov. 30 where Brooke, Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel, Tyler, Doddridge, Ritchie, Harrison, Taylor and Mingo County residents were unable to call 911 for up to 10 hours.

Dean Meadows, executive director for the council, filed the complaint and said the telephone provider has inadequate backup to ensure telephone service to many centers when telephone lines are subject to vandalism or bad weather.

Meadows’ complaint asked the Commission to ensure that Frontier provides proper backup services so “no resident will ever lose the ability to call 911 for emergency assistance.”

“We’re really at our wit’s end about what ought to be done,” Meadows said in a press release.

Toy Story Gets A Much Anticipated Sequel

With new owners, the Mountain Craft Shop Co. will bring traditional folk toys to a new generation of kids.

This story originally aired in the Dec. 23, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Steve Conlon knew everything about the traditional Appalachian folk toys he and his wife Ellie manufactured at the Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, West Virginia.

He knew the history, the principle of physics that made them work, and the right technique to make that ball on a string float up into the air and come down perfectly inside the wooden cup.

There was one thing Steve didn’t know, though. He didn’t know who would make these traditional toys once he and his wife were gone.

“How will it play out? We don’t know yet,” he said in a 2019 interview with Inside Appalachia. “The reality of the situation is we are manufacturing in America. Look around you. There’s a lot of competition.”

A year after that interview, Ellie died of lung cancer. A year after her death, Steve died from leukemia. That left the business in the hands of their son Terra.

Zack Harold

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Steve and Ellie Conlon purchased the Mountain Craft Shop Co. in 2002 from its founder Dick Schnake.

“Terra — it’s Latin for ‘earth,’” he said. “I was an earth child, born on the living room floor.”

Terra lives in San Francisco now, where he’s a computer programmer. He tried to run the business from afar since his parents’ passing but it hasn’t really worked. The company lost money last year. So he decided to try and sell — but that didn’t work out either. At least, not the way Terra wanted.

“I had buyers that were interested in the businesses in Pennsylvania or New York. And ideally I wanted to keep it in the location,” he said.

Mountain Craft Shop Co. is so tied to Wetzel County — so tied to West Virginia — that even the wood used to make the toys comes from local trees that Terra’s dad would cut, mill and dry himself.

One day, while Terra was back in the Mountain State trying to wrap up his parents’ affairs, Fred Goddard stopped by. Goddard is a minister who lives just a few miles up the road.

“I saw some things for sale and I thought, ‘That would be handy on the farm,’” he said. “So I pulled in and [Terra] began to talk about the toy store and I began to share my memories with him.”

It turns out Goddard’s relationship with these toys goes back even farther than Terra’s — and even farther than Terra’s parents. Steve and Ellie Conlon were not the Mountain Craft Shop Co.’s original owners. They bought it in 2002 from its founder, Dick Schnake. He started the company in the mid-1960s. He was a mechanical engineer by trade but didn’t manufacture the toys himself. Schnake handled research and development and farmed out manufacturing to a staff of artisans.

But Schnake displayed his toys in a little showroom near his home, where shoppers could take them for a test drive. Goddard’s mother used to take him to that toy store when he was a little boy.

“Dick would stand and talk for hours,” Goddard said. “He would explain how the toys were made. He wanted us to see every toy in the store, not just what we were interested in. He wanted to show us everything.”

Zack Harold

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Traditional wooden folk toys manufactured at the Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, West Virginia. The toys can be found at craft fairs and gift shops all over Appalachia.

Goddard doesn’t only have memories — he still has some of the toys his mother purchased from Schnake.

“I have a rubber band gun. And that one, of course, tended to get me in some trouble around the house,” he said.

As Goddard walked around the Conlons’ shop, Terra floated an idea.

“All of a sudden he said ‘I could sell you this business.’ And I’m thinking ‘No, I could never own this,’” Goddard said. “And he made an offer and I realized, I can’t pass this up.”

The timing was almost too perfect. Goddard lost his wife of 33 years to COVID-19 last December. Since then, he found love again with a widow who lost her husband to COVID-19. They’re engaged now and Goddard’s fiancé, as fate should have it, is an amateur woodworker.

Goddard plans to keep any current employees who want to stay. He also plans to recruit some additional elves to help build toys. The company won’t be able to stay in its current facility but Goddard plans to find a storefront where he can display the toys just like Dick Schnake once did.

Terra says it’s what his parents would’ve wanted.

Zack Harold

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

These marble runs are among the many traditional folk toys manufactured by the Mountain Craft Shop Co. They are sold with marbles manufactured by Marble King in nearby Paden City.

“I’m super pumped that not only is it someone in West Virginia, but it’s someone in Wetzel County,” he said. “My mom spent so much time, so much effort, developing the ‘West Virginia grown’ and Mountain State marketing. I like that.”

Fred’s just happy he’ll be able to give kids the same kinds of toys — and the same kinds of memories — he has.

“This area, this state, this country, this world, needs this store,” he said.

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.