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.

Bigger not better, consolidation foes say

Gazette Online

Bigger not better, consolidation foes say
Aug. 23, 1998

When the question is whether to consolidate junior high and high schools, bigger is better, says West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Hank Marockie.

By Randy Coleman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Shirley Gue believes she's stood on about every soapbox in Mason County the past few years, and her sermon has never varied. Bigger is not always better, she preaches.
Gue is a newly elected member of the Mason County school board and she won her seat with a one-issue campaign: Stop the proposed school consolidation in Mason County.
But West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Hank Marockie disagrees. He says when the question is whether to consolidate junior high and high schools, bigger is definitely better. Marockie says you have to consider the achievements, the course offerings and the preparations for higher education.
"Smaller schools just don't have the resources bigger schools have," Marockie said.
The battles over consolidation in Mason and Pendleton counties have focused attention on a growing trend in West Virginia.
There have been 254 school closures since 1989, according to School Building Authority figures. Some were the result of consolidations, others were due to declining enrollment or outdated facilities.
Enrollment in West Virginia schools dropped from 401,882 in 1970 to 323,762 in 1990, then even further to 301,314 during the 1997-98 school year.
Twenty-eight counties have been through school closures or consolidation projects since 1989. Of West Virginia's 55 counties, 27 have a single consolidated high school. Several other school districts are considering consolidations.
Marockie does not deny that school consolidations often create chaos. But he says neither the arguments nor the intensity of the opposition against consolidation has changed in 30 years. Mason County is not unique, he said.
Opponents to consolidation have several objections. But two common arguments are that closure of a school can destroy a community and the opening of a consolidated school creates transportation headaches.
"It's the same arguments. People don't like to lose their communities," Marockie said.
The Mason County Board of Education had proposed merging Wahama, Point Pleasant and Hannon high schools into one central, consolidated school in the county seat of Point Pleasant. Since Wahama and Hannon are grades 7-12 schools, the plan also called for consolidating the county's middle schools into a separate middle school, also in Point Pleasant.
Gue told voters she would fight the consolidation to the bitter end, and she won by a landslide.
"I think it's pretty obvious the people here have spoken on how they feel about making one high school. They just don't want it," Gue said.
So on July 1, Gue and another newly elected board member took over, giving consolidation opponents a majority. They intend to stop the consolidation, Gue said, even though it will cost the district $14 million in state aid to help not only with the new school but in upgrading existing schools.
"I'd be crazy not to want the $14 million, and I'm not crazy," she said. "But there are some prices not worth paying."
Marockie insists the changing landscape brings virtually no complaints in the end.
"Look at the new Roane County High School. That's a good example of why it is a good idea for schools to consolidate," Marockie said.
"Roane County's one consolidated high school offers students a far better opportunity for secondary education than the two community high schools did before."
Walton and Spencer high schools consolidated in 1994 to form Roane County High. According to Roane County administrators, Walton High had offered its students 49.5 courses and Spencer 73. Roane County High School offers 117 different classes.
Consolidations are often proposed so that schools might achieve guidelines recommended by West Virginia's School Building Authority. Those guidelines include:
Elementary schools with a minimum enrollment of 300 students in grades 1-6 or a minimum of two classes of at least 22 students per grade level.
Middle or junior high schools with an average of 150 students per grade level.
High schools with a minimum enrollment of 200 students per grade level.
Geographic and other considerations may require those numbers to be altered for individual school systems.
Not everyone is convinced. The fight goes on in Pendleton County, where the state Supreme Court approved a plan last month to consolidate two high schools.
A group of parents opposed merging about 130 middle and high school students from Circleville into Franklin High School, which has about 520 students. The plan called for the closing of the existing Circleville School, which had kindergarten through grade 12, and the opening of a new elementary school in Circleville.
Circleville parents oppose the merger because it would require some students to be on a bus up to three hours a day. The bus from Circleville to Franklin rides over North Mountain, one of West Virginia's highest. The trip is dangerous and would prevent the Circleville students from participating in extracurricular activities, parents say.
More than 50 students who would have gone to Circleville High have now enrolled in neighboring Grant County. More are expected to do the same. A 40-plus-mile trip along a river valley to Petersburg awaits most of them.
Despite the questions that invariably arise with school consolidations, Marockie says the Supreme Court opinion in the Pendleton County case indicates the court understands West Virginia cannot afford a top-quality high school in every community that wants one.
The court decision supports the mission where the state is going, Marockie said.
"It supports the future for the development of schools. ... I think it has a very far-reaching impact," Marockie said. "We can now move forward with our programs."
But the arguments against consolidation persist:
Consolidated schools destroy local communities.
"Why would we want our children to get on a bus to ride two hours to a central school," Gue said.
"Our communities are strong, and our people love the communities and the schools. If the schools had lousy test scores and weren't successful, that would be another matter. But our schools are good schools."
Moving students to larger schools damages the self-esteem of low-income students and hurts their chances for academic success.
"A growing number of studies suggest that equally poor kids attending large and small schools can learn more in small schools," said Athens, Ohio, researcher Craig Howley.
Howley says he has studied school consolidations in California and West Virginia.
The one constant is that affluent children often thrive in larger schools, but students from poor families do not fare well.
Consolidating schools creates long bus rides for students, often as long as two hours one way.
"It's not my place to be pro or con when it comes to consolidations. My role is merely to review documentation that would affect consolidations," said Wayne Clutter, the state's director of school transportation and facilities.
"But there is no bigger misconception in this state than the 'quote' two-hour bus ride. You always hear about two-hour bus rides to school. But two-hour bus rides don't exist in West Virginia."
Clutter says the state has transportation guidelines it considers when a consolidation is proposed. Elementary school students should not be on a bus more than 30 minutes and middle schoolers not more than 45 minutes. High school students should not travel more than an hour, Clutter said.
More than 97 percent of West Virginia's students fall within those parameters, he said.
Bigger schools are no longer safe.
"The more people you put together, the less control you have. A big school has become a dangerous place, and we don't want that for our children," said Harts High School teacher Gwen Rainey.
School officials in both counties have proposed sending Harts students from Lincoln County to a consolidated high school in Chapmanville, Logan County, and Rainey is fighting the effort.
Marockie says he understands communities' concerns about losing their individuality.
But he adds that with every lost school, a new sense of community emerges.
"Take the bus rides, for example. When you get students from one community or neighborhood on a bus together, they get a social environment that they wouldn't ordinarily get," Marockie said.
"But what people forget is the issue is not transportation. The issue is student achievement. It's better to be on the bus an extra 15 minutes to get the advantages you can get from a bigger school."
But he adds that consolidating schools is progress. Marockie says in 1932 West Virginia had 400 school districts. An act of the 1933 Legislature created 55 school districts with five-member boards and a superintendent.
Since that time, Marockie says, the number of schools has gradually been pared down.
State officials insist that all school consolidations are up to individual systems.
"We can't look at anything a county board doesn't bring to us. We have no authority whatsoever," said Clacy Williams, executive director of the School Building Authority.
"But when a project comes to us, it's considered for funding. We evaluate the projects individually. We look at a county's structures, their fire hazards. We look at individual conditions of the buildings. Then we decide how to go forward in terms of state dollars."
Williams said, "But I have to say again, we don't go forward until a county wants to go forward."

Consolidation hearing delay doesn't dampen Mason spirits

Consolidation hearing delay doesn't dampen Mason spirits
May 14, 1998

Gazette Online

By Tara Tuckwiller
PUTNAM COUNTY REPORTER

POINT PLEASANT - Hours after they claimed victory in the Mason County school board race, consolidation foes were back in the courthouse Wednesday for an injunction hearing to kill a proposed consolidated high school.
Their spirits weren't dampened when Circuit Judge Clarence Watt sent them all home, continuing the hearing until May 20 after school board lawyer John Teare filed a surprise motion early Wednesday.
"I'm still on a high from last night," said New Haven retiree Dorothy Roush, who worked to replace incumbents with anti-consolidation candidates Peggy Huff and Shirley Gue. "I wanted to go through town blowing my horn, but I've gotten this far without getting arrested and I don't want to start now."
Most of the courthouse spectators have been fighting consolidation for years. They lined up to support Gue in her injunction lawsuit this spring after school board members started pushing for a consolidated high school north of Point Pleasant.
Gue only named Mason County school board members in her lawsuit, but Teare's motion says that the state school board and School Building Authority should be defendants, too.
There's one problem with that motion, said Mason County board President David Morgan. The school board never discussed it, much less decided to do it. "I walked in this morning and they had filed their motion," said Morgan, who has voted in the minority on the board against consolidation. "They must have had a meeting last night that I missed."
Morgan lost in Tuesday's election, but anti-consolidation member Darrell Hagley will remain on the board. Together with Huff and Gue, Hagley will be able to outvote member Amanda Clark and new member Jo Hannah Rorrer, who are seen as favoring the consolidated high school.
Morgan said he suspects the election results scared the consolidation advocates on the board, and they want to bring in the state as a defendant in an effort to get the case moved to a Kanawha court.
"I'm no lawyer, but that's a problem for me," Morgan said. "We're supposed to be his clients, and I don't know whether this is good for us or bad for us. I think it's something that should have been discussed. It's major."
Superintendent Larry Parsons, who has worked to push consolidation through, said it's not out of the ordinary for a school board lawyer to act without consulting his clients.
"The board is not consulted routinely by the law firm," Parsons said. "That's the decision the law firm made, and the firm has the latitude to do that."
Parsons said Wednesday that if the new board starts voting against consolidation, he will just switch gears and do what they tell him.
"If the board changes and the direction's different, I'll work just as vehemently for that board," he said. "My job is to work for the board."
Gue's lawyer, Barry Bruce, asked for the continuance so he could review the opposition's argument. As he did two weeks ago when testimony started, Watt told the school board not to move forward on the consolidation plan until the lawsuit is resolved.
Watt, who had postponed the remaining testimony until after Tuesday's election, joked about the outcome with the crowd. "I notice among the spectators some bloodshot eyes. What were you doing last night?" he said. "I take it that there are winners and there are losers. Somebody has said that's all we've got left, is elections to decide things.
"Now go home and get some sleep."

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."