State fails to heed lessons from school consolidation

Gazette Online
(Aug. 24)

The emperor has no clothes
State fails to heed lessons from school consolidation

THIS is really sad. The West Virginia School Building Authority continues blindly down its path of destruction, taking into consideration not one single shred of evidence to support what it is doing. But destruction is what the SBA achieves. With your money and your blessing, dear readers.

Eight years ago, I put up a pretty good fight against school consolidation. I fought it on West Virginia Public Television and in the Gazette, in the courtrooms in Clay and Greenbrier counties, and in open school board meetings in Randolph, Preston and Mason counties. I lost, of course. So did West Virginia children and the folks who live in the wonderful small towns of this state.
I argued then, and I argue now, that the work of the SBA destroys the children of this state. I had less empirical evidence at that time. I have more now, and the information is just too sad.
These guys are supposed to be educators. They are supposed to encourage our children to learn and employ the benefits of science. Yet, in their own work they disregard or reject the very method which they espouse for their children. For the best scientific research has shown again what we have known for many years: Consolidation destroys children.
The research I discuss here is not my own. I am indebted to many hard-working souls whose labor I will share with any individual or school board who requests my sources. This information is based on cold, hard numbers computed through the best scientific methods we know.
Consolidation does not save money. Countless studies have proven that. In many cases the cost per student increases with consolidation.
Consolidation does not improve student performance, contrary to the theory espoused by the icon of American education, Dr. James Conant. Bad and ill-informed theory that.
Conant argued in his book, "The Comprehensive High School," published 31 years ago, that a larger school would provide an economy of scale and allow for more specialized classes, a greater variety of activities. Well, he was right about the variety and the specialization. What he implied, of course, was that this would improve American education. In that he was not correct. Implemented, the theory has destroyed the very thing he wished to improve.
We know now that the expanded curriculum benefits only a very small minority of children. On the other hand, we also know that as school size expands, student participation decreases.
We know now that the students shipped in from rural communities participate less in school activities than they did in their own small community schools. We know now that attendance drops and truancy and behavior problems increase as school size grows.
Controlling all other variables, we know now that the use of cigarettes, chewing tobacco, alcohol and controlled substances increases with the size of the school. We also know that consolidation is a major cause of school violence.
The list is very long. Teacher-student interaction is damaged by large schools. Small schools are more flexible and adaptable to the particular needs of that school. The children of poverty fare the worst in the move to consolidation. Parental involvement decreases as schools consolidate. Small communities are ruined when they lose the centerpiece of community life.
So why does the SBA continue to impose its treacherous will upon the small communities of West Virginia? It's like the story in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible." Once you've destroyed a few lives, you've got to keep on doing it or else you'd have to admit you were wrong. And what bureaucrat has ever been wrong?
We read that student achievement scores have been going down over the past several decades.
Did it ever occur to anybody that the years covered by this discouraging revelation are identical to the years in which we have been consolidating our schools?
Did anybody ever notice that while departments and schools of education have multiplied, and while the bureaucratic accrediting agencies placed more and more demands upon those schools and departments, school violence has increased and student performance has been going down?
Does anybody notice anything wrong with this picture?
Hello out there! We've ruined the children. Does anybody hear me? Does anybody care? Is anybody out there? The emperor has no clothes.

Dr. Warner, a professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College, is one of the Gazette's contributing columnists.

Mason votes 3-2 to close 3 schools

Mason votes 3-2 to close 3 schools
April 8, 1998

Gazette Online

By Tara Tuckwiller
STAFF WRITER

POINT PLEASANT - Parents and some school board members say they worry that Mason County wants to build its consolidated high school on a contaminated site, but school board members voted Tuesday in a 3-2 decision to close the county's three high schools anyway.
Board President David Morgan voted against the closures. He said officials are trying to rush through a 1,400-student consolidated school north of Point Pleasant, which would be built near a federal Superfund site on land that state environmental officials say may be contaminated.
"As I have jokingly said, what the heck. Two heads are better than one," Morgan said. "I would not want the decision of which of my grandchildren's heads to pat when they do something good."
Mason school officials have been trying to consolidate county high schools for years, and three years ago got a $14.4 million appropriation from the state School Building Authority to build on land the board already owns in Point Pleasant. Citizens stalled the project with lawsuits.
Last week, county Superintendent Larry Parsons got permission from the School Building Authority to buy a different site from a group of local businessmen, and build the school there. The county would pay up to $650,000 for the land and would have to come up with several million more dollars to build the school.
Until 1994, the 65-acre tract the school board wants was part of the Superfund site, where toxic waste from a World War II explosives factory is buried 2 feet under the ground. Environmental officials took the 65-acre tract off the Superfund site, along with about two-thirds of the surrounding land, after conferring with a community advisory board.
The advisory board was headed by John Musgrave, then head of the Mason County Development Authority, now director of the state Lottery Commission.
Musgrave is part of a partnership that bought several hundred acres of the property in and around the Superfund site in 1995, including the portion school officials now want to buy.
Hannan parent Shirley Gue, who has filed for a circuit court injunction against the consolidation, said she was "floored" when she found out the new site was part of a Superfund project until a few years ago. She started researching documents about the site from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense, and put her findings up on an Internet site.
"A site with this much questionable history is a concern for most parents in the county," Gue's site states. "Until a certification is issued by the U.S. Army declaring explicitly this site is contaminant free ... this site should not be considered as a place to put 1,400 students."
Parsons wrote to Pete Costello of the state Division of Environmental Protection, telling him that local residents had expressed concern about possible contamination. Costello has said the site may be contaminated with DDT or other pesticides from a state agricultural test station which operated there for years.
"I was requested to provide a written response to 'assist in eliminating this concern,' " Costello said, quoting from Parsons' letter. "I just said what I've been saying. We don't have reason to believe the property is contaminated, but that does not reflect any analytical sampling work.
"As far as the agricultural contamination, we just haven't turned that page at all. We're not commanding the school board, but the responsible person would turn that page."
Parsons said the county will conduct environmental testing on the site, and will build somewhere else if it turns out to be contaminated. Morgan said the uncertainty about the site makes him uncomfortable.
"I'm not confident with statements such as, 'We think it's clear,'" Morgan said. "That's probably what they said 30 years ago when they buried God knows what there.
"We can't bury our problems. They will eventually come back to haunt us."
Board member Darrell Hagley, who also voted against closing the schools, said he didn't even want to vote Tuesday. He said the board wasn't given time to consider written questions from several residents about the possible contamination, the hours-long bus rides students would face, and other issues.
Parsons said he wants the state school board to vote on Mason County's plan at its meeting Thursday. Gue plans to speak at that meeting, too.
"I'll have to," she said. "I have to try to get them to consider this possible contamination."