Monongalia County Schools had big feet in 2018. So did everyone else.
That’s because West Virginia, in the most fundamental ways of the state’s contentious labor history, took the nation to school in ’18.
A nine-day work stoppage by public school educators and other public employees in February put the Mountain State’s traditional economic inequities in a klieg light glare.
Public schools in all 55 counties were shuttered as the fight against low wages and teacher shortages rolled on.
Parents and their children joined teachers and cafeteria workers on picket lines (often in snow and freezing weather) for the duration of the movement that empowered public employees in other states to do the same.
A geographic catchphrase, one that managed to be both complimentary and threatening, was even inspired.
“Don’t make me go West Virginia on you,” read one picket sign at a similar walkout in Colorado.
Meanwhile, teachers here tried to offer enrichment events during the stoppage.
During one such Read-Aloud gathering at a local restaurant (where an impromptu food pantry was fashioned for nutritionally needy students) Samantha Little snapped a book closed — and exhaled, with a smile and a laugh.
“I needed that,” said Little, who teaches kindergarten at Mountainview Elementary. “I miss my kids.”
Empathetic minutes
On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, 17 people were shot dead at Parkland High School in Florida by a disturbed former student.
Almost to the day one month later, students across the country walked out of the classrooms for a protest that lasted 17 minutes — one for each victim of the violence.
During the protest at University High School, senior Brice Wade said society makes victims of innocent bystanders with lethal ease.
It’s too easy to get guns, said Wade, who was enlisting in the military after graduation. That includes people with emotional disorders, he said.
That same system, Wade said, allows such individuals to languish in their pain — right up to when they pull the trigger on a large scale.
“If I wanted to, I could go to High Street today and buy a gun,” he said. “Not from a shop, but from a person.”
Scaling the mountain
A report that state educators were talking about in Morgantown over the summer didn’t yield any real surprises for classroom-watchers in the state.
The report showed that only 4 percent of college-going seniors who graduate from Monongalia County Schools need to take remedial classes to catch up during their college freshmen year.
That’s opposed to 60 percent from McDowell County who do need such courses.
And despite boasting a high school graduation rate of nearly 90 percent, West Virginia still has one of the lowest post-secondary educational attainment rates in the nation.
Policymakers want to level that out and chose the home of WVU as the place to announce just such an initiative to do so.
“West Virginia’s Climb” is the name of the initiative that brought former Gov. Bob Wise and educators from across the state to the University City.
Carolyn Long, the interim chancellor of West Virginia’s Higher Education Policy Commission, said the climb, while daunting, is doable.
The initiative plans to equip 60 percent of all West Virginians — not just the newly graduated from high school — with a college degree, or post-secondary certificate of professional training, by the year 2030.
Departures and arrivals
Frank Devono, the longtime superintendent of Mon Schools, announced his retirement in the spring.
Board of Education members immediately gave the former teacher, principal and governmental liaison high marks for his 13 years of service.
“Thank you for giving a kid from North View an opportunity,” said Devono, referring to the neighborhood in Clarksburg where he grew up.
His replacement, Dr. Eddie Campbell Jr., who was hired in June, brought a world of experience to the job.
A Wheeling native, Campbell began his career as a teacher and coach in Virginia. He then headed an American school in Shanghai, China, before returning to the U.S. to serve as a high school principal in Alaska.
He was superintendent of Tucker County Schools when he was tapped for the job here.
“I always knew I’d get back to West Virginia,”he said.
In the meantime, 2018 was the year longtime BOE members Barbara Parsons and Clarence Harvey Jr., retired from the board.
Melanie Rogers and Sara Anderson were elected to fill the vacancies.
Talking TIF
Mon’s BOE closed out ’18 by asking a state lawmaker for help during this year’s Legislative session, which will be gaveled in later this month in Charleston.
The board wants to be more involved in the tax-increment financing process. Or at least more informed.
TIF districts are set up by local governments as a way to jump-start economic development.
Mon County is currently the beneficiary of four such districts that increased assessed property values by nearly $200 million.
The bad news, BOE member Nancy Walker said, is that TIFs in West Virginia don’t talk to school boards.
Currently, there’s no statute in the TIF process that sets aside land for school construction.
School districts elsewhere, such as in neighboring Maryland, are able to use TIF for just that.
“We have to try to find and buy the land at exorbitant prices,” Walker said, “when actually the taxpayers are already funding the infrastructure through the TIF district.”
“I think it’s something we probably should have considered early on,” said Senate Minority Leader Roman Prezioso, D-Marion.
