MASON COUNTY SCHOOL'S ACCREDITATION REPORT

From financial issues & staffing issues to countywide test scores and accreditation status.  This report alerts and/or reassures parents, community members and county taxpayers about what is going on in Mason County Schools!  Access the full report here.

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Direct from the West Virginia State Board Agenda:

"Education Performance Audit Reports for the Mason County School District and – Ashton Elementary School, Beale Elementary School, Leon Elementary, New Haven Elementary School, Roosevelt Elementary School, Point Pleasant Intermediate School, Hannan High School, Point Pleasant Junior/Senior High School, Wahama High School and the Mason County Career Center – (Action)ATTACHMENT
Announced on-site reviews (five days in advance) were conducted at Mason County School District and – Ashton Elementary School, Beale Elementary School, Leon Elementary School, New Haven Elementary School, Roosevelt Elementary School, Point Pleasant Intermediate School, Hannan High School, and Point Pleasant Junior/Senior High School, and Wahama High School October 25 – 28, 2010. The OEPA conducted the reviews which concentrated on student, school, and school system performance and progress. The reviews also consisted of resource evaluation.

Based upon the results of the Education Performance Audits, it is recommended and a motion is requested that the WVBE approve the recommendations listed in the Mason County School District Report."
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See the full report here:  

http://wvde.state.wv.us/minutes/current/ksealoepaExec.Sum&MasonCnty&Schools.pdf

Consolidation leads to cruel schools

Aaron Metz
Consolidation leads to cruel schools
Friday November 10, 2000

Back to Gazette Online

Our state Department of Education strongly promotes school consolidation because of "economies of scale."

But I have piles of evidence on my desk showing that consolidation undercuts hope of achieving higher test scores. In other words, it is pretty much proven scientifically: Consolidate and test scores fall.

Education Week magazine reported on 150 small schools Chicago is studying. The evidence concludes that with smaller schools, there are fewer days missed, fewer classes cut, less violence, less expense per pupil, higher grades, and the teacher can call each student by name.

In the frenzy to consolidate, as Tara Tuckwiller reported, the small Hannan rural school in Mason County was stripped in hope the state would provide consolidation money for a bigger school. But a Marshall University professor brought scholars to the school and transformed it into a school of excellence.

Likewise, researchers find that small schools help students overcome the effects of poverty. Craig Howley of Ohio University and Robert Burke of Marshall University did research that came to the conclusion that smaller schools in poor communities "tend to maximize the school's performance as measured by standardized tests."

Harden Elementary in Harrison County earned the designation "School of Excellence" in June. In spite of this, the school was lost to consolidation because it "exceeded all goals and standards except economies of scale," according to the state Department of Education.

Smaller schools, smaller classes, is what many parents and teachers have been saying for years. A Tennessee study proves that "small classes in early grades" can help kids to do better, all the way through college, and "they should be provided in all our elementary grades."

Times change. On my first day of school, I cried while the teacher held me in my seat as my mother started walking home. I wasn't too upset though, because I was going to run home at recess.

Now with consolidation, mothers put their tiny tikes on a big yellow bus full of absolute strangers. The first day of school can be very cruel and can leave lasting impressions. That mother may cry too as the big bus vanishes from her view. And her little one doesn't have the options I had on my first day at school.

And so on. The Putnam County Board of Education recently approved a $90 million school facilities plan that includes consolidation of Poca and Buffalo high schools. Tim McCoy, a father of two, said, "The worst thing I can think the school board can do is sit with their arms crossed and their minds closed, and not listen to what the people of Putnam County have to say about the issue."

In the Harts High School gym, Gov. Underwood said, "We need to look at ... the need for consolidation." And just like that, the people were on their feet. They were electrified. They were applauding, hooting and hollering, according to a Gazette report. Don't the people of West Virginia have any constitutional rights?

School consolidation prepares students for prison. Twelve-year-old Sarah Lusk is smart enough to know that consolidation can be cruel. She writes in the Gazette, "I feel very strongly against the consolidation plan. I believe the bigger the school is, the more violence there will be. Sometimes I feel as if the adults don't think this thing through all the way and at times like this, the kids are smarter ... We truly don't want it to work, so we are going to work our hardest to make sure it doesn't." (Sarah earned an A-plus in civics.)

Most every small school has one or two more-or-less violence-prone students, probably from dysfunctional homes. Consolidation brings them together. And there just might be a Hitler-type among them who has a natural, innate urge to lead a gang. Don't be surprised if they add more than expense and frustration to the educational institution.

"A study by the New Jersey Boards Association found that size was the most important predictor of school violence, " crime expert F.A. Fox said. "The most effective strategy for preventing school violence is to limit school size."

The consolidation of Roosevelt Junior High School in Charleston should never have happened. But the die has been cast and it's too late now. Parents were angry and the students cried. Why did the county board take a school away from a community teeming with children? Don't communities have any constitutional rights - right here in Charleston with more than 1,400 lawyers (see Yellow Pages)? Now, who is forcing Pete Thaw to choose another "Roosevelt school" for consolidation?

It is all over. Roosevelt has gone the way of the bowling teams. The heart of the community is gone like the village square or the public well. Soon the neighbors and the young people won't know each other by name anymore.

Consolidation can be cruel. As a lady in Eleanor said: "Many people don't understand what the school means to the small town of Eleanor. It's been the pillar of the community for over 50 years. "

Consolidation can be cruel - and where is the evidence for "economies of scale"?

Metz is retired as a West Virginia State College economist.

School panel calls for local meetings

School panel calls for local meetings
To gauge support for building projectsJune 30, 1998

Gazette Online

By Eric Eyre
STAFF WRITER

The state School Building Authority will require county school districts to hold forums with community residents to gauge support for school building projects.
The authority hopes that public input may fend off future lawsuits over school closings and consolidations.
"They must take their plan to the community and talk about it," authority Director Clacy Williams said at a Monday meeting. "We want to try to solve problems before they become aggravations."
Such "aggravations" have popped up most recently in Mason County, where the School Building Authority has allocated more than $14 million for a consolidated high school in Point Pleasant. A judge put those plans on hold, however, after consolidation opponents filed suit.
The authority also is appealing a Kanawha Circuit judge's ruling that blocked a plan to consolidate two high schools in Pendleton County.
Parents oppose the plan to close Circleville High School and bus its students to a renovated Franklin High School. The authority gave the county more than $7 million in 1995 for that renovation and expansion.
During the next year and a half, county school boards throughout the state will develop 10-year plans for improving their school buildings. The School Building Authority gives each county $20,000 for the studies.
Under the new authority guidelines, school districts must hold at least two public forums to discuss their building plans, which may include school closings.
"The purpose is to let the public be part of the planning process," Williams said. "The public is going to become educated and informed."
Under the current rules, county districts must hold a public hearing - but only after they have developed their building plans.
The new guidelines will help the agency determine whether community residents support projects when school boards submit them for funding.

To contact staff writer Eric Eyre, call 348-5194.

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.

Mason school consolidation site tests delivered with a disclaimer

Mason school consolidation site tests delivered with a disclaimer
July 28, 1998

Gazette Online

By Tara Tuckwiller
STAFF WRITER

POINT PLEASANT - No toxic waste appears to be contaminating the Mason County consolidated high school site, the head of a private testing firm told school board members Monday.
The results came with a disclaimer, though.
"We didn't sample for anything and everything," said Ron Potesta, head of Potesta and Associates of Charleston. "There may be something we missed."
The county paid Potesta $12,750 to test the school site's soil and groundwater after parents raised an alarm in April, when state environmental officials said the 65-acre field might be contaminated with toxic waste.
School board members - some of whom have since been voted out of office - had just voted to abandon a site the county already owned and buy the new site for $650,000 from a group of local businessmen.
They planned to close Wahama, Hannan and Point Pleasant high schools, and build a $15 million, 1,400-student county high school on the land north of Point Pleasant.
The land was part of a Superfund environmental cleanup site until four years ago, and toxic waste left over from a World War II explosives factory still contaminates the land and groundwater nearby.
The property was also used as a state agriculture test station for years, and parents became concerned that DDT and other pesticide residues may still contaminate the land.
Potesta didn't test for some of those chemicals, board member Shirley Gue noted. Gue has led other Mason County parents in fighting consolidation for three years.
"There's a known contaminant list from the Department of Defense. Arsenic, etc.," Gue said. "None of those things were tested?"
"That's correct," said Potesta engineer Dave Carpenter.
Carpenter said he just tested for what he expected to find, based on the memories of people who worked on the property and advice from some West Virginia University professors.
No written logs could be found for WVU's 30 years of agricultural tests, Potesta said. The man who ran the test station for 10 years said he may have some records of what chemicals he used, but he couldn't lay his hands on them just now.
Another man who had farmed the property said he had records of the chemicals he used, but he wouldn't let Carpenter see them.
"Most of them were referring to their memory, not exact logs," Potesta said.
"That's what concerns me," Gue said.
Potesta said he found no trace of the explosive trinitrotolulene (TNT), which contaminates the groundwater on the nearby Superfund site. He didn't find any residues from the pesticides and herbicides people remembered using on the field, either.
Potesta based his findings on 20 soil samples and a surface water sample from a drainage ditch that flows onto the property from the direction of the old explosives plant.
In wet weather, water from the ditch pools in the middle of the field and slowly seeps into the ground. In dry weather, a local farmer says the water in that ditch runs red, Carpenter said.
"That could be natural high iron in the soil. It could be biological activity," Carpenter said. "I never saw anything stained red in the ditch."
Local residents are still fighting the consolidation plan with a lawsuit, which is currently making its way through Mason County Circuit Court. Since anti-consolidation members took over the county school board in July, those residents have gained confidence.
"Won't make any difference," whispered consolidation foe Clifford Oliver, as Potesta and Carpenter prepared to make their presentation to the school board. "There ain't gonna be a school down there."

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

School site's suitability questioned

School site's suitability questioned
Mason land may be contaminatedApril 2, 1998



Gazette photo by F. BRIAN FERGUSON
Mason County school officials say this 65-acre site is perfectly suitable for a consolidated high school, but residents worry about contamination from a nearby Superfund site and an old pesticide research station.



 

By Tara Tuckwiller
Gazette Online
POINT PLEASANT - Mason County school officials say they've found the right piece of land for their consolidated high school. It's vacant and flat, just north of Point Pleasant, with plenty of room for parking lots and football fields.
It also sits in the shadow of a federal Superfund site, where toxic waste left over from a World War II explosives factory lies buried in the ground and still contaminates the groundwater.
Also, environmental officials say pesticide residues such as DDT, the legacy of an old state agriculture test station, may still contaminate the 65-acre tract the school board wants.
"I'm alarmed," said Shirley Gue, a parent who has led residents in a three-year fight against the consolidated high school. "If they're going to build this school, it at least needs to be in a safe place."
Lawsuits filed by Gue and other parents have stalled the project since 1995, when the state School Building Authority gave Mason County $14.4 million to consolidate its three high schools. County officials had previously talked about building on a tract of land the county already owns, until this week when they got permission from the authority to buy the land near the Mason County Airport and build the school there.
"We approved this on the condition that it's a suitable site," said Clacy Williams, the authority's executive director. "I wasn't aware of any problem with pesticides. That sounds like something the school board is going to have to get their architectural firm to address."
The school board would pay the 10 local businessmen who own the property as much as $650,000 for it, county Superintendent Larry Parsons said. The original site near the Mason County Vocational Center is too small, he said, and the owners have government documentation that says the site near the airport is safe for building.
"We'll do the necessary studies," Parsons said. "If it ends up that it's not safe, I'll be the first to say build somewhere else."
The buried chemicals at the nearby Superfund site probably won't threaten the school site, said Pete Costello, site project officer for the state Division of Environmental Protection's Superfund section. The school site lies outside the area the factory used for production and waste treatment of the explosive trinitrotolulene (TNT), where contamination was heaviest. Past tests of the land the school board wants have not shown any contamination.
"We don't have a decision document to write it off," Costello said. "We're comfortable there's nothing there, but we're not certain."
When the explosives plant shut down in the 1940s, the state started using part of the land - the school site - as an agricultural test station. Since that had nothing to do with the TNT plant, the Army didn't have to clean it up, Costello said.
"Pesticide residue would be a big concern with me," he said. "In the 1950s, DDT was very common, and some other chemicals that are pretty persistent. Being an experimental station, it's hard to tell what they were testing."
In later years, somebody used the same site to dump some PCB transformers illegally, Costello said. The contaminated soil was scooped up and hauled away.
"There were some groundwater and soil samples taken in 1988 or 1989 regarding that, and everything appeared hunky-dory," he said.
Parsons said residents who oppose consolidation are just grasping at the contamination issue in a desperate attempt to stop the project. Gue, who has filed for a circuit court injunction against the consolidated school, said she will pursue the contamination angle if that tactic fails.
School officials are letting politics get in the way of children's safety, she said.
"Look who owns that property," she said. "You're talking about the power brokers of the county."
A partnership called Deerfield Development bought 700 acres in and around the Superfund site in 1995, just after Mason County got the $14.4 million from the School Building Authority. The partnership consists of state lottery director John Musgrave, who headed the Mason County Development Authority in 1995; Jack Fruth, who owns a chain of pharmacies; Bob Wingett, publisher of the Point Pleasant Register; Michael Sellards, executive director of Pleasant Valley Hospital; area businessmen Marshall Reynolds, Art Hartley Sr., Leo Calandros and Charles Lanham; and Point Pleasant attorneys C. Dallas Kayser and Michael Shaw.
Shaw said he and his partners bought the land because they wanted to bring in industries, and they never thought of selling it to the school board. A number of businesses have shown interest, he said.
"We're not too keen on the idea of putting a school there," he said. "It would severely limit our ability to develop businesses."
Costello said the land Deerfield Development owns would probably not be the easiest land to sell, since so much of the adjacent land has been on the EPA's national priorities list for hazardous waste cleanup since 1984.
"There's a stigma being on this national priorities list," he said. "The school portion isn't on there, but it's so close to the land that is."

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."