June 20, 1999
LAWRENCE PIERCE/ Sunday Gazette-Mail
Consolidation isn't always the answer, some Marshall University
researchers argue. To prove it, they've developed a three-year program to turn
tiny Hannan Junior-Senior High School in Mason County into an educational
showplace.
By Tara TuckwillerSUNDAY
GAZETTE-MAIL
ASHTON - There's something odd about tiny Hannan Junior-Senior
High School in southern Mason County.
It still exists.
While West Virginia's wave of consolidation closed one small
school after another in the 1990s, Hannan parents fought a hard legal battle to
save the little mismatched cluster of buildings.
But a decade on death row left Hannan - like other small
schools that have survived consolidation - a run-down shell with a decimated
curriculum. Its supporters have been searching for a way to salvage it and
preserve its nurturing, close-knit atmosphere for the 270 children who learn
there.
Enter Marshall University. Rural-education scholars there have
taken Hannan under their wing for a three-year study. The idea is that with a
little technology and expertise, small schools can actually educate rural
students better than West Virginia's new, consolidated schools.
The Hannan experiment will employ realistic, cost-efficient
methods that any rural school in the state or nation could use, said Stan
Maynard, the Marshall education professor who's heading the team.
When the three-year study is up, Maynard wants to have a model
that communities and school districts can follow to build and sustain
top-quality small schools.
"This will have an impact on rural education in West Virginia,
maybe nationally," Maynard said. "Wide-ranging implications we can't even
fathom. This will be something the state can learn from."
'Inexcusable.
Indefensible'
Visitors drive for miles on a meandering county road until they see
the bent metal sign inviting them onto the Hannan campus. Tattered tennis courts
waste away off to one side. Inside, floor tiles are missing. Glass in the
classroom doors is cracked.
Talk about ripe for consolidation. By state School Building
Authority standards, Hannan's 30 graduates a year can't justify the expense of
keeping the battered school open.
Hannan parents thought differently.
"I don't mean to be wisecracking, but the main positive is that
the children can get to it," said Shirley Gue, a Hannan-area parent who was
elected to the school board last year. "We've got children on the bus right now
an hour to an hour and a half one way, just to get to Hannan."
The previous school board got School Building Authority money
to build a new high school for all of Mason County's children, near Point
Pleasant in the county's northern tip.
The new school board voted to give the money back. For one
thing, they argue, Hannan children would have had to ride the bus three or four
hours a day to attend the Point Pleasant school.
For another thing, the only reason Hannan is run-down is
because officials wanted to consolidate it, say Gue and board President Darrell
Hagley.
For example, even though Hannan's enrollment was at an all-time
high during the 1990s, school boards yanked class after class out of the
curriculum - French, Spanish, honors English, advanced placement history.
Previous school boards also appear to have withheld maintenance money, board
members say.
"Unfortunately, once a school is marked for consolidation,
administrators take the mental stand that they're not going to spend another
penny on that school," Gue said.
"Potentially, we end up graduating generations of children
whose education has been neglected. It's inexcusable. Indefensible."
Long-distance learning
Consolidation supporters argue that larger schools can offer a
wider variety of classes, and they cost less to operate than small
schools.
Parents at Hannan have argued that small schools offer
something more important to a 15-year-old than, say, the opportunity to take
Advanced Piano.
"A child feeling they are important," Gue said. "Someone caring
if they're at school. Being known by their name, not their ID number.
"These children know their existence is important to someone.
Unfortunately, for a lot of children, the only place they get that is at
school."
A growing number of researchers have found the same thing.
Also, rural-school researchers have found that while suburban and urban children
sometimes learn better in bigger schools, rural children learn better in small
community schools. Maynard's program follows that research.
LAWRENCE PIERCE/Sunday Gazette-Mail
Teachers at Hannan met for their first training sessions this month.
Researchers plan to bring new teaching methods and distance-learning classes to
the school, which the state has placed on probation for low standardized test
scores.
"I believe a lot of children who get lost in the shuffle in
bigger schools can be identified and worked with in smaller schools," Maynard
said.
Some researchers are also finding that consolidated schools
don't actually deliver the savings or the enhanced curriculum they promise. Even
if they do, Maynard said, that's not an obstacle anymore.
If students need more classes, Hannan can offer them through
distance-learning. The satellite's already there, left from a grant Hannan got
in the early 1990s for a physiology class via satellite. Marshall has pledged to
send graduate assistants to monitor any new satellite classes Hannan wants to
offer.
Maynard's team of professors has also joined with
representatives from RESA II, an arm of state government that provides services
to schools in the Mason County area. Maynard's wife, Barbara, heads the RESA
team.
"This is one thing RESA ought to be involved in," she said.
"National research shows it costs as much as 16 percent more to run a smaller
school. But if those children are doing better when they leave here, how much
does that save society in the long run?"
The team has started training teachers at Hannan and its feeder
school, Ashton Elementary, this summer. All next year, Maynard will bring in
master teachers in every subject area once a month to continue training teachers
in new methods and technologies.
Mason County is paying $68,000 over the next three years for
the whole program. Maynard's team is applying for federal grants to help offset
that cost.
"It's our job to make certain the children in rural America
have as much opportunity as everyone else," Maynard said. "But it's got to be
realistic. We've got to ask, ëWhat can I do with the existing budget?'"
Scattered farms
Parents and teachers, veterans of the consolidation fight, sat
around a school library table at Hannan last week. They met to count Hannan's
battle scars.
"OK, they keep telling us nothing's wrong with that toilet,"
began Don Linger, the school's math teacher and girls' basketball coach. "Well,
it won't flush. Now, I'm not the brightest man in the world ..."
The room dissolved into laughter as others around the table
ticked off things that had been allowed to go down the tubes while Hannan sat on
the chopping block. The wiring's so bad, the power keeps going out. The
mismatched buildings could use a coat of paint.
"I'm off the paint selection," Linger vowed, as others in the
group began suggesting colors. "Well, I guess we could go with a red-brick
color. It's been red brick for decades ..."
"No!" parent Darlena Long interrupted, straight-faced. The rest
of the group guffawed as Linger hid his head in mock shame. "We want a light,
bright. You're out of the paint choice, son."
It's hard sometimes to get people to band together in an area
like Hannan's, Maynard said. For one thing, there's no town nearby, so no common
ground there. People live on scattered farms with nothing connecting them but a
few churches and the school.
But in the Hannan area, many people met and developed close
friendships during the consolidation fight, as they joined group lawsuits and
car-pooled to school board meetings.
Those people must now channel that camaraderie and passion into
rebuilding their school, said Maynard, who has organized other rural-education
programs in Mingo and Lincoln counties.
"It's put up or shut up now," Long told other parents at the
meeting last week. "We've fought consolidation all this time. Now we've got our
school and we've got to show what we can do with it."
The idea is that a county doesn't have to give in and
consolidate just to get state money. With a little creative financing, a county
can keep its small schools solid and up-to-date.
To make it work, everybody has to get in on the act, Maynard
said. Parents, students, teachers, local businesspeople, the county school board
and higher education have to work together.
"Not every school has a Marshall at their back door," Maynard
said. "This must be a model so anyone can do it. That will be [Hannan's]
legacy."
For example, to keep costs down, parents and neighbors who are
electricians might agree to help rewire a building. Others might want to help
paint.
"Get some of the kids to design the flier," Linger suggested.
"They're better at computers than we are."
"What about the new window place in Huntington?" Long added.
"We could ask them to donate a window. They've got a lot of our graduates, Tommy
Meadows and all those boys."
Maynard said his team will make reports throughout the study,
and it plans to track graduates starting this year. Not only whether graduates
went to college, the military or the work force, but how well they did
there.
"By the end of the three years, there will be a total package
here," Maynard said. "When people come along wanting to do what we've done, we
will have documented everything.
"If we find a cure for this disease, so to speak, we'd better
know what medicine we took."
To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, call
348-5189.
