Small schools get push from Marshall on-site study

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.

Mason consolidation plan gets OK

But parents who oppose combining three high schools vow to block proposalMarch 31, 1998

By Tara Tuckwiller
Gazette Online

POINT PLEASANT - Mason County school officials got state permission Monday to close the county's three high schools and build a new school north of Point Pleasant, but many of the 120 residents who attended a public hearing on the closings said they won't stand for it.
"Here we go again," said Hannan parent Shirley Gue, who has led an anti-consolidation group in the county for three years. "The people of Mason County have said it a hundred times, but for the record, I will say it again. We do not want one high school in Mason County."
Twenty-one parents from Gue's group, which calls itself "Mason County Kids First," filed a lawsuit against the county school board last week in Mason circuit court, seeking an injunction against the consolidated school plan. They allege that board members are violating the 1997 agreement that settled the county's last anti-consolidation lawsuit by not following certain procedures, such as updating bus schedules, before they proposed consolidation again.
Board members want to close Hannan, Wahama and Point Pleasant high schools and build a $19 million, 1,400-student consolidated school about two miles north of Point Pleasant. Residents have repeatedly stalled the county's attempts to consolidate since the state School Building Authority granted $14.4 million for a consolidated high school three years ago.
"We basically heard from the SBA today that if we don't move ahead on this project, it's a dead duck," board member Mary Beth Carlisle said at Monday night's public hearing. "We can't let the people vote on it, and we can't use the money for anything we want. That's a fallacy."
Residents who spoke at the hearing said Mason County is too big for one high school, and they would like to see at least two high schools stay open. School officials since September have been planning a regional high school that would serve 750 students from Mason and Putnam counties.
Parsons and other county officials got permission from the state School Building Authority on Monday to move their planned consolidated high school from a plot the county owns near Point Pleasant High School to a bigger plot outside town, which would cost an estimated $650,000. The authority approved the site change on the condition that the school would serve all Mason County students, Parsons said.
That would seem to rule out a regional high school, but Parsons said it is still a possibility.
"We have reason to remain optimistic about that," he said.
Cindy Ball, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said she would send her daughter Jennifer to private school in Huntington before she would let the school board bus her from Hannan to a consolidated high school at Point Pleasant.
"A lot of parents in Mason County work in Huntington," Ball said. "I do, and if my daughter got sick I would be 100 miles away from her. I couldn't pick her up."
The consolidated high school could be finished within three years, Parsons said. Board members will vote on closing the three high schools at their April 7 meeting.
As for the $4 million difference between the cost of the new school and the money Mason County has in hand, Parsons said he's not sure where that will come from.
"We need to look at a variety of sources on that," he said.
If Mason County doesn't start building a consolidated school by next March, the county will have to give up the money, reapply and compete against other counties for funds again, the Authority said Monday.
Putnam County schools Superintendent Sam Sentelle said officials there will continue planning the regional high school.

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.

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."

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."

Mason consolidation plan gets OK

Mason consolidation plan gets OK
But parents who oppose combining three high schools vow to block proposalMarch 31, 1998

By Tara Tuckwiller
Gazette Online

POINT PLEASANT - Mason County school officials got state permission Monday to close the county's three high schools and build a new school north of Point Pleasant, but many of the 120 residents who attended a public hearing on the closings said they won't stand for it.
"Here we go again," said Hannan parent Shirley Gue, who has led an anti-consolidation group in the county for three years. "The people of Mason County have said it a hundred times, but for the record, I will say it again. We do not want one high school in Mason County."
Twenty-one parents from Gue's group, which calls itself "Mason County Kids First," filed a lawsuit against the county school board last week in Mason circuit court, seeking an injunction against the consolidated school plan. They allege that board members are violating the 1997 agreement that settled the county's last anti-consolidation lawsuit by not following certain procedures, such as updating bus schedules, before they proposed consolidation again.
Board members want to close Hannan, Wahama and Point Pleasant high schools and build a $19 million, 1,400-student consolidated school about two miles north of Point Pleasant. Residents have repeatedly stalled the county's attempts to consolidate since the state School Building Authority granted $14.4 million for a consolidated high school three years ago.
"We basically heard from the SBA today that if we don't move ahead on this project, it's a dead duck," board member Mary Beth Carlisle said at Monday night's public hearing. "We can't let the people vote on it, and we can't use the money for anything we want. That's a fallacy."
Residents who spoke at the hearing said Mason County is too big for one high school, and they would like to see at least two high schools stay open. School officials since September have been planning a regional high school that would serve 750 students from Mason and Putnam counties.
Parsons and other county officials got permission from the state School Building Authority on Monday to move their planned consolidated high school from a plot the county owns near Point Pleasant High School to a bigger plot outside town, which would cost an estimated $650,000. The authority approved the site change on the condition that the school would serve all Mason County students, Parsons said.
That would seem to rule out a regional high school, but Parsons said it is still a possibility.
"We have reason to remain optimistic about that," he said.
Cindy Ball, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said she would send her daughter Jennifer to private school in Huntington before she would let the school board bus her from Hannan to a consolidated high school at Point Pleasant.
"A lot of parents in Mason County work in Huntington," Ball said. "I do, and if my daughter got sick I would be 100 miles away from her. I couldn't pick her up."
The consolidated high school could be finished within three years, Parsons said. Board members will vote on closing the three high schools at their April 7 meeting.
As for the $4 million difference between the cost of the new school and the money Mason County has in hand, Parsons said he's not sure where that will come from.
"We need to look at a variety of sources on that," he said.
If Mason County doesn't start building a consolidated school by next March, the county will have to give up the money, reapply and compete against other counties for funds again, the Authority said Monday.
Putnam County schools Superintendent Sam Sentelle said officials there will continue planning the regional high school.

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."