Just like that, those Bluebird buses are back on the road this morning in Monongalia County.
Today is the first day of school in Mon — and about 12,000 students are reporting to their classrooms this morning for the start of the 2019-20 academic year.
Assistant Superintendent of Schools Donna Talerico said Monday afternoon the welcome mat is out.
Her district, she said, is ready to get moving after the legislative stalls of the previous school year.
“We’re excited,” she said. “We’re happy to have our kids back.”
Talerico said while she expected no unfilled teaching positions this year, it still may be a couple weeks in before all educators are officially hired for their classrooms.
“That’s because of paperwork and background checks and all those procedural things,” she said.
Mon fares better than most county districts in West Virginia, she said.
That’s because there’s always a pool of certified substitutes really for fill-in work.
“A lot them are retired teachers from our system,” she said.
The district is also making its first, collective steps across a post-House Bill 206 landscape this term.
HB 206, with its call for charter schools and other controversial statutes passed in a special vote this summer after initially failing to make it out of the 2019 Legislative session earlier in Charleston.
Its passage was along party lines: GOP lawmakers generally favored the bill, while their Democrat counterparts didn’t.
Today, Talerico said, Mon County’s district is simply making a vote to getting started for the new school year.
“We’re ready to meet the challenges of the new legislation,” the assistant superintendent said.
In the meantime, the district is also looking at the challenge of filling service positions, including bus drivers.
Mon school buses run 120 routes a day and log more than 1 million miles a year.
Renovations at Morgantown High School continue this term while work on a major addition of classrooms at Ridgedale Elementary is set to begin.
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