Bigger not better, consolidation foes say

Gazette Online

Bigger not better, consolidation foes say
Aug. 23, 1998

When the question is whether to consolidate junior high and high schools, bigger is better, says West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Hank Marockie.

By Randy Coleman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Shirley Gue believes she's stood on about every soapbox in Mason County the past few years, and her sermon has never varied. Bigger is not always better, she preaches.
Gue is a newly elected member of the Mason County school board and she won her seat with a one-issue campaign: Stop the proposed school consolidation in Mason County.
But West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Hank Marockie disagrees. He says when the question is whether to consolidate junior high and high schools, bigger is definitely better. Marockie says you have to consider the achievements, the course offerings and the preparations for higher education.
"Smaller schools just don't have the resources bigger schools have," Marockie said.
The battles over consolidation in Mason and Pendleton counties have focused attention on a growing trend in West Virginia.
There have been 254 school closures since 1989, according to School Building Authority figures. Some were the result of consolidations, others were due to declining enrollment or outdated facilities.
Enrollment in West Virginia schools dropped from 401,882 in 1970 to 323,762 in 1990, then even further to 301,314 during the 1997-98 school year.
Twenty-eight counties have been through school closures or consolidation projects since 1989. Of West Virginia's 55 counties, 27 have a single consolidated high school. Several other school districts are considering consolidations.
Marockie does not deny that school consolidations often create chaos. But he says neither the arguments nor the intensity of the opposition against consolidation has changed in 30 years. Mason County is not unique, he said.
Opponents to consolidation have several objections. But two common arguments are that closure of a school can destroy a community and the opening of a consolidated school creates transportation headaches.
"It's the same arguments. People don't like to lose their communities," Marockie said.
The Mason County Board of Education had proposed merging Wahama, Point Pleasant and Hannon high schools into one central, consolidated school in the county seat of Point Pleasant. Since Wahama and Hannon are grades 7-12 schools, the plan also called for consolidating the county's middle schools into a separate middle school, also in Point Pleasant.
Gue told voters she would fight the consolidation to the bitter end, and she won by a landslide.
"I think it's pretty obvious the people here have spoken on how they feel about making one high school. They just don't want it," Gue said.
So on July 1, Gue and another newly elected board member took over, giving consolidation opponents a majority. They intend to stop the consolidation, Gue said, even though it will cost the district $14 million in state aid to help not only with the new school but in upgrading existing schools.
"I'd be crazy not to want the $14 million, and I'm not crazy," she said. "But there are some prices not worth paying."
Marockie insists the changing landscape brings virtually no complaints in the end.
"Look at the new Roane County High School. That's a good example of why it is a good idea for schools to consolidate," Marockie said.
"Roane County's one consolidated high school offers students a far better opportunity for secondary education than the two community high schools did before."
Walton and Spencer high schools consolidated in 1994 to form Roane County High. According to Roane County administrators, Walton High had offered its students 49.5 courses and Spencer 73. Roane County High School offers 117 different classes.
Consolidations are often proposed so that schools might achieve guidelines recommended by West Virginia's School Building Authority. Those guidelines include:
Elementary schools with a minimum enrollment of 300 students in grades 1-6 or a minimum of two classes of at least 22 students per grade level.
Middle or junior high schools with an average of 150 students per grade level.
High schools with a minimum enrollment of 200 students per grade level.
Geographic and other considerations may require those numbers to be altered for individual school systems.
Not everyone is convinced. The fight goes on in Pendleton County, where the state Supreme Court approved a plan last month to consolidate two high schools.
A group of parents opposed merging about 130 middle and high school students from Circleville into Franklin High School, which has about 520 students. The plan called for the closing of the existing Circleville School, which had kindergarten through grade 12, and the opening of a new elementary school in Circleville.
Circleville parents oppose the merger because it would require some students to be on a bus up to three hours a day. The bus from Circleville to Franklin rides over North Mountain, one of West Virginia's highest. The trip is dangerous and would prevent the Circleville students from participating in extracurricular activities, parents say.
More than 50 students who would have gone to Circleville High have now enrolled in neighboring Grant County. More are expected to do the same. A 40-plus-mile trip along a river valley to Petersburg awaits most of them.
Despite the questions that invariably arise with school consolidations, Marockie says the Supreme Court opinion in the Pendleton County case indicates the court understands West Virginia cannot afford a top-quality high school in every community that wants one.
The court decision supports the mission where the state is going, Marockie said.
"It supports the future for the development of schools. ... I think it has a very far-reaching impact," Marockie said. "We can now move forward with our programs."
But the arguments against consolidation persist:
Consolidated schools destroy local communities.
"Why would we want our children to get on a bus to ride two hours to a central school," Gue said.
"Our communities are strong, and our people love the communities and the schools. If the schools had lousy test scores and weren't successful, that would be another matter. But our schools are good schools."
Moving students to larger schools damages the self-esteem of low-income students and hurts their chances for academic success.
"A growing number of studies suggest that equally poor kids attending large and small schools can learn more in small schools," said Athens, Ohio, researcher Craig Howley.
Howley says he has studied school consolidations in California and West Virginia.
The one constant is that affluent children often thrive in larger schools, but students from poor families do not fare well.
Consolidating schools creates long bus rides for students, often as long as two hours one way.
"It's not my place to be pro or con when it comes to consolidations. My role is merely to review documentation that would affect consolidations," said Wayne Clutter, the state's director of school transportation and facilities.
"But there is no bigger misconception in this state than the 'quote' two-hour bus ride. You always hear about two-hour bus rides to school. But two-hour bus rides don't exist in West Virginia."
Clutter says the state has transportation guidelines it considers when a consolidation is proposed. Elementary school students should not be on a bus more than 30 minutes and middle schoolers not more than 45 minutes. High school students should not travel more than an hour, Clutter said.
More than 97 percent of West Virginia's students fall within those parameters, he said.
Bigger schools are no longer safe.
"The more people you put together, the less control you have. A big school has become a dangerous place, and we don't want that for our children," said Harts High School teacher Gwen Rainey.
School officials in both counties have proposed sending Harts students from Lincoln County to a consolidated high school in Chapmanville, Logan County, and Rainey is fighting the effort.
Marockie says he understands communities' concerns about losing their individuality.
But he adds that with every lost school, a new sense of community emerges.
"Take the bus rides, for example. When you get students from one community or neighborhood on a bus together, they get a social environment that they wouldn't ordinarily get," Marockie said.
"But what people forget is the issue is not transportation. The issue is student achievement. It's better to be on the bus an extra 15 minutes to get the advantages you can get from a bigger school."
But he adds that consolidating schools is progress. Marockie says in 1932 West Virginia had 400 school districts. An act of the 1933 Legislature created 55 school districts with five-member boards and a superintendent.
Since that time, Marockie says, the number of schools has gradually been pared down.
State officials insist that all school consolidations are up to individual systems.
"We can't look at anything a county board doesn't bring to us. We have no authority whatsoever," said Clacy Williams, executive director of the School Building Authority.
"But when a project comes to us, it's considered for funding. We evaluate the projects individually. We look at a county's structures, their fire hazards. We look at individual conditions of the buildings. Then we decide how to go forward in terms of state dollars."
Williams said, "But I have to say again, we don't go forward until a county wants to go forward."

Putnam parents blast school consolidation proposal

Gazette Online

Putnam parents blast school consolidation proposal
June 6, 1999

By Tara TuckwillerSUNDAY GAZETTE-MAIL
Dishing up pizzas at Angaleno's Restaurant, Sherry Torman sees dozens of customers every day who remember the last time they talked about shutting down Buffalo High School.
They remember how the late Mr. Hulbert gave the land to the county 50 years ago, with the promise that there would always be a school there. They remember the speeches and pleas they made in 1992, when the school board almost closed the aging little school.
About 2,000 of them have signed Torman's petitions. She's starting the battle against consolidation early this time.
"There's going to be a fight on their hands," she vowed.
The anti-consolidation push has united groups of parents from Buffalo to Poca, although other parents in the area argue in favor of consolidation.
It's only a few weeks old, coming after a recent public meeting of Putnam County's school planning committee known as Vision 20/20.
Vision 20/20 started three years ago. The school board asked a group of parents, teachers and community members to find out what people in Putnam County want in the way of school buildings.
As recently as October, Vision 20/20 said don't consolidate - just fix up what we've got. But now, Vision 20/20 is asking people if maybe they wouldn't like to consolidate Buffalo and Poca high schools into one new high school at Eleanor or Red House.
"They're saying consolidation means technology, better facilities. I think it's a lie," said Terry Foster, who is leading an anti-consolidation campaign in the Poca area.
Poca just lost its biggest employer when a Rite Aid warehouse announced it was pulling out with its 600 jobs.
The high school's enrollment has dropped in recent years to fewer than 600, although elementary and middle-school enrollments have gone up.
Buffalo, by contrast, is home to Putnam County's new Toyota engine plant. County planners expect the area's population to explode by 70 percent in the next 20 years.
Becky Raynes, an Eleanor native and Vision 20/20 member, said she doubts that.
"I don't see that happening," said Raynes, who has put three of her children through 300-student Buffalo High. "There's just not any property. It's all tied up in industrial property. There's some land out Eighteen Mile Creek and places like that, but it's not flat like in [Teays Valley]."
Raynes used to be anti-consolidation, too - until her children started college.
"It didn't really hold them back in college, that they'd gone to Buffalo," she said. "But there were classes they wanted to take in high school, and they just weren't offered. If the school was just a little bit bigger ..."
Raynes favors building a new high school between Poca and Buffalo. According to Vision 20/20 statistics, so do half the people they've surveyed.
The other half wants to keep all four of the county's high schools. Raynes said she imagines Vision 20/20 will probably wind up recommending that.
"I have a feeling that's the way it's going to be," she said. "If so, I won't move. My other three will graduate from Buffalo, too."
No matter what Vision 20/20 recommends, it will be a while before the Putnam school board does anything, according to board member Joe Starcher.
"The board won't make a decision to run a huge bond just because Vision 20/20 says so," Starcher said.
Whether Putnam County consolidates or fixes up all of its schools, Vision 20/20 has estimated the cost at $80 million.
Without consolidation, the state School Building Authority probably won't provide much of that money. So county voters would have to approve a multimillion-dollar bond issue.
Even so, Starcher said he won't vote to close schools just to get state money. He said Putnam County could redraw its school districts instead to give Buffalo and Poca more students.
"I'm not in favor of [consolidation]. I want four high schools," he said.
"There's no way in the world I'd vote on anything until I see what redistricting would do."
Meanwhile, Torman and Foster say they'll keep carting petitions over to the school board office.
They argue that a single high school on the north side of the Kanawha River would force some children to ride the bus for too long, and that big schools mean increased crime and less chance that a child will be able to participate in confidence-boosting extracurricular activities.
Vision 20/20 will hold another public hearing on the issue at 7 p.m. July 6 at Winfield High School.

Judge refuses to block allocation of $14.4 million school building funds

Judge refuses to block allocation of $14.4 million school building funds

05-18-99
By BRIAN FARKAS
Associated Press Writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- A Mason County man has lost an initial round to keep $14.4 million in state school construction funds in his county.
Don Greene was in court Monday attempting to delay a state School Building Authority decision that reallocated the money to projects in 11 other counties. The authority had voted hours earlier to fund the projects.
The Leon resident's lawyer told Kanawha County Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib Jr. the reallocation should be halted until next month's court hearing on Greene's lawsuit challenging the county's decision to return the money to the state.
Mason County was given the money in 1996 to replace Point Pleasant, Wahama and Hannan high schools with a single school. Since then, a new school board decided against the consolidation project and in March agreed to give the money back to the state.
That decision came after the state said it would take back the $14.4 million because county officials had failed to start construction within the three-year period required by law.
"You're asking a board of education to do something the board has said it doesn't want to," Zakaib told Greene. "The board of education has already taken a position -- they don't want the money."
The judge then denied Greene's request.
Although the county gave up the money, Greene has filed lawsuits in Kanawha and Mason counties to force board members to stick to the original consolidation plan.
Even with the pending lawsuits, the authority was told Monday it should proceed with its plan to fund the other projects. Authority members had planned to reallocate the money earlier, but agreed to delay their decision to give Greene time to pursue his challenge.
"The threat of legal action shouldn't be used to intimidate state boards," Silas Taylor, managing deputy attorney general, told the authority. "You gave him the opportunity he needed and he failed to take advantage of it."
The authority agreed to use the $14.4 million, plus $500,000 in other authority accounts to fund projects in Barbour, Berkeley, Braxton, Grant, Greenbrier, Monongalia, Pleasants, Raleigh, Roane, Webster and Wyoming counties, said Clacy Williams, the authority's executive director.

Mason farms are being uprooted for those in search of open spaces

Homegrown
Mason farms are being uprooted for those in search of open spacesJuly 20, 1998

Gazette photos by CHRIS DORST
Families farmed these Southern Mason County pastures for years before developers started filling them with subdivision houses. Now local resident Ricky Wright uses his tractor to keep the grass neat around the new Wedgewood Estates.

Gazette Online
By Tara Tuckwiller
STAFF WRITER
GLENWOOD - Ricky Wright could have been any other farmer in this isolated stretch of southern Mason County, chugging slowly across the sloping pastures on his old farm tractor in the July dusk.
But the sweet, grassy scent in the air didn't come from fresh-mown hay. Wright and his tractor had just clipped some tall weeds from around the white brick pediments announcing the entrance to the new Wedgewood Estates subdivision.
Just two years ago, the land belonged to one of the huge family farms that still dominate the area. Then city water came through. Then Toyota announced plans to build an engine plant just a few miles away in Buffalo. Then the state started building a bridge across the Kanawha River to that plant, and made plans to turn nearby U.S. 35 into a four-lane corridor to Interstate 64.
Developers snapped up a half-dozen or so working farms and transformed them into upscale housing. Now commuters from Charleston and Huntington are moving into the area just north of Milton, known to the locals as Mason Road.
"They're building these monster homes," said Wright, a local resident who mows the empty subdivision lots on the side. He nodded toward the $300,000 masses of plate glass and sand-colored brick, standing starkly in the fields. "You know it's got to help the economy around here somehow."

Newcomers have boosted business at Smith's Market on Mason Road. Otherwise, they haven't changed the remote area much, said store owner Bob Smith.The area's farm economy has never been able to compete with Point Pleasant, the distant northern county seat. Now some locals, like Wright, hope the subdivision growth will give them economic and political leverage they've never had before.

The newcomers, for the most part, just want a pretty place to live.
"We like open spaces," said Gail Hagen, a Wedgewood resident. "My husband likes open spaces."
Hagen stood on the front step of her year-old house and surveyed the endless pasture land surrounding her.
"Actually, I don't know why people want to live this far out," she said. "It's really bad."
Hagen moved with her family from New York after her husband took a job with Inco Alloys in Huntington.
"I thought we'd have lots of neighbors," said Hagen, who has two teen-age sons. "But it's mostly older people with no kids. We drive the boys all the time so they can play with their friends."
April Jackson, who moved in a few miles up the road two years ago, said she and her husband love the seclusion. They built their house near Buffington Acres subdivision to escape crowded Cabell County and raise their five Saint Bernards.
"When we moved in, we didn't really care about the schools," Jackson said. "We just liked the country."
The Jacksons are having a baby next month, as are two of their neighbors who also moved in during the construction boom. They're all worried about the county's plan to consolidate nearby Hannan High School into a single county school at Point Pleasant.
"Nobody in their right mind would move in here if they knew their kid had to ride the bus for two hours," Jackson said. "This is the growing area. It doesn't make any sense to take away the school."
The growth could stop if Hannan High School is shut down. If the area does keep growing, then Hannan area residents should reap the benefits, Jackson said.
"We know our taxes are going to go up," she said. "We want to benefit, not just have Point Pleasant benefit from our taxes."
Property taxes and prices have already ballooned, said area native Bob Smith. Smith runs the 50-year-old Smith's Market grocery store on Mason Road.
"At one time, this was all 100-acre family farms. Nobody was going to cut them loose," he said. "Now they're cutting them up and getting $20,000 for a lot, and some of them are half-acres."
Business has jumped at Smith's Market in the past two years, since newcomers have virtually nowhere else to shop. No convenience stores or gas stations have followed the subdivisions into the area.
"It's a nice quiet area. They haven't changed it much," Smith said. "Not yet."
The nearest shopping mall is still miles away from Mason Road. Nothing is really close at hand, and Wright said he likes it that way.
"Yeah, it'll change, but hopefully for the good," Wright said. "I hope. I hope."

To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, call 348-5189.