Consolidation Just the facts, ma'am

Gazette Online

Aug. 26, 1998

Consolidation
Just the facts, ma'am

IN their single-minded defense of consolidation, both state Schools Superintendent Hank Marockie and Charleston Daily Mail editorial writers are ignoring the facts.

A recent Daily Mail editorial was especially egregious. It said: "Franklin High is 17 miles away. Yet when half the former Circleville students sign up for a school 40 miles away in Grant County rather than attend Franklin High, one wonders if this is just a football rivalry carried to extremes."
That statement insults parents who went to the state Supreme Court in their effort to keep the Circleville school open, and it ignores the geography of the area.
Actually, the ride to Grant County is shorter - and safer - for many students living on the far side of North Mountain, which separates the two halves of Pendleton County.
Some of these students endured long rides to reach Circleville. Most of the 17-mile ride over tortuous mountain roads to Franklin is an add-on. To them, Grant County is nearer.
This is not about football rivalry; it's about students forced to spend three hours a day on a bus on dangerous roads.
Marockie is just as loose with facts. He claims that students do better and have more opportunities in large, consolidated high schools. But more and more academic research shows that students - especially students from poorer families - do better academically in smaller schools. They are more involved, and their parents are more involved, than when they attend large, distant schools. Truancy and dropout rates are lower.
Marockie also says that the state can't afford not to consolidate. But no one has ever shown that consolidation leads to any cost savings. The state School Building Authority abandoned a study on that issue.
Finally, Marockie pointed to Roane County as a consolidation success story. He ignores, however, that Roane County is less mountainous than Pendleton, has about twice the population in a smaller geographic area, and has a better network of roads.
The Gazette has long supported consolidation. We recognize many of the benefits of bigger schools. But it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, especially in a state with the terrain and population patterns of West Virginia.
Consolidation can be a wonderful thing in one county, yet be unwise in another. Pendleton is a prime example.
The protesting Pendleton parents asked only for some consideration of the special circumstances their children face: sparse population, dangerous roads, mountainous terrain. They got no such consideration. And now they have been accused of opposing consolidation because of a schoolboy sport.
That's really sad.