Christmas Celebration Spectacular

 Fine Arts Concert

Hannan’s Fine Arts program will be highlighted tonight at 7:00 pm. The concert will take place in Hannan’s Commons Area (cafeteria/courtyard) where cookies and punch are going to be served. The entire community is invited and we hope to see lots of friends and family. We are eager to spread our Christmas cheer and present the students’ remarkable talents to the public.

Election may mean consolidation reversal

Election may mean consolidation reversal
May 13, 1998

By Ken Ward Jr.
GAZETTE ONLINE

Anti-consolidation candidates trounced incumbents in the Mason County school board race Tuesday night, perhaps paving the way to reverse a move to create one high school for the entire county.
Challengers and leading consolidation opponents Shirley Gue of Ashton and Peggy Huff of New Haven led the ticket in a field of 15 candidates, with 3,379 and 3,312 votes, respectively.
With all 38 precincts reporting, another challenger, Jo Hannah Rorrer of Point Pleasant, came in a distant third with 1,371 votes to capture the third open seat.
Huff and Gue ran a "Vote for Two, Huff and Gue" campaign against the consolidation and incumbent consolidation proponents Donna M. Thompson and Mary Beth Carlisle.
"I think the county has spoken," Gue said from Point Pleasant. "We're going to say a prayer and then stop one high school."
Thompson received just 844 votes and Carlisle, 446. Another incumbent, J. David Morgan, received 1,027 votes. Morgan had a mixed voting record on consolidation, but voted against it in the end.
School consolidation opponents targeted Carlisle and Thompson for defeat after they voted in favor of combining Point Pleasant, Wahama and Hannan high schools into one facility.
One of the two incumbents not up for re-election this year voted against the consolidation. So with a victory by Gue and Huff, they could attempt to reverse the move.
"They do not want just one high school in Mason County," she said. "And they knew if they elected us they wouldn't have just one high school in Mason County."
Parents fighting the consolidation plan have halted the project, at least temporarily, with a suit filed in Mason Circuit Court.
Gue said she would like to put the consolidation issue on the ballot in the fall and allow the people of Mason County to vote on it. She thinks it would be defeated easily.
"There's no way one high school can serve all the students of our county," Gue said. "Our county is way too large and an hour or an hour and a half bus ride is too much."
Among other school board candidates, Paul James Doeffinger received 1,282 votes; Bob Drain, 979; Tom Sauer, 643; Donald E. Greene Jr., 531; Michael Ellswroth Whalen, 416; Rich Tench, 332; and Frankie Chapman, 227.
In other Mason County races, Circuit Clerk Bill Withers led the Democratic primary with 2,074 votes. Sherry Clatworthy received 374 and Shelly D. Mayes, 248.
Republican candidate Patty Lee was unopposed.
Incumbent County Commissioner Phyllis Ashley Arthur defeated two challengers in the Democratic primary. Arthur received 1,664 votes. Challenger Olston O. "Nick" Wright received 1,370 and Ben Roush Jr., 708.
James H. Lewis led the GOP primary with 972 votes. Gene O. Haer received 749 votes and Freddie Green, 736.
County Clerk Diana Cromley easily held off a challenge in the Democratic primary from Harry "Moke" Simpkins. Cromley received 2,485 votes and Simpkins, 1,180 votes. Republican Annette Boyles was unopposed.

Consolidation Children pay the price

Editorial
the Charleston Gazette ONLINE

July 23, 1998

Consolidation

Children pay the price

THE STATE School Building Authority has been doling out millions of dollars for school consolidations on the premise that bigger schools offer better and more efficient education for children.


The Gazette has generally supported consolidation over the years, but the SBA's single-minded drive for large schools that meet "economies of scale" discriminates against the needs of children in large, sparsely populated, rural counties.
 
Unfortunately, the state Supreme Court did not see it that way. Justices overturned a decision by Kanawha Circuit Judge Tod Kaufman that could have forced the SBA to reconsider its priorities.


As a result, the closure of Circleville High School in Pendleton County and the busing of its students to a new school in Franklin will proceed.


That means some students will be on buses three hours a day on twisting, treacherous roads over North Mountain. That's good for their education?


Meanwhile, across the nation, education experts are coming to the conclusion that smaller schools are better.


Arthur Foresta, who earned accolades for his work in New York City's troubled school system, told a meeting of editorial writers at a Hechinger Institute seminar at Columbia University that smaller schools create a more caring teaching environment.


"Kids fall through the cracks at larger schools," he said.


Smaller schools are better able to encourage parental involvement, which is a key factor in learning and educational success. What kind of parental involvement can the new Pendleton school expect, especially from those parents who live an hour and a half away?


Research is also showing that smaller schools are especially beneficial for low-income students, who tend to perform worse at large, consolidated schools.


The SBA maintains that larger high schools save money, making enhanced curricula available. But that's a dubious assertion in large, rural counties where transportation costs eat up potential savings.


Deirdre Purdy, an expert witness in the Pendleton case, noted in a Gazette commentary last year that 15 counties consolidated schools in 1990 - and nine of them had budget deficits in 1995. Economies of scale didn't save them from running into the red.


The SBA refuses to fund schools that don't meet a threshold of 200 students per grade level - unless, as in Franklin, the school will serve an entire county.


The authority apparently got that magic number from some studies saying the ideal high school has 600 to 900 students. But many other studies dispute this conclusion. And the authority abandoned research it began to determine whether consolidation produces any financial savings.


Again, mergers are often beneficial, especially in urban counties. But SBA members should be smart enough to realize that there is no blanket solution for a rural state like West Virginia.


What works well in Charleston may be disastrous in mountainous Pendleton

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.

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.