Bryan Daugherty didn’t give out the best of grades to West Virginia’s education system Wednesday night in Morgantown — and he’s an educator himself.
“We’ve gotta create opportunities that kids can see,” the Ritchie County High School teacher told state Board of Education members assembled at the Monongalia County Technical Center.
The county’s vocational facility on Mississippi Street that teaches everything from pie baking to plasma welding was the second stop on the board’s “listening tour,” discussing needs in all of West Virginia’s 55 counties.
Four other stops are planned this month at Charmco, Martinsburg, Eleanor and Glen Dale.
All that listening, state Board President Dave Perry said, will be as uncomplicated as it isn’t.
“We want people to be comfortable in presenting their opinions and ideas,” he said. “We want to hear about what’s working, and what’s not working.”
The next mission, he said, will be to weave all of the above into a narrative for state lawmakers come January for the 2020 legislative session.
About 90 educators from across the region turned out at the tech center.
Daugherty’s class rosters include both Advanced Placement learners and other students who know they’ll be enrolling in the workforce after graduation, opposed to attending college.
He said he knows he can push his students in his advanced courses, since they’ve learned to expect it.
“I can do that with my AP kids,” he said.
He also wants to effectively do that with his other more vocational-minded students, he said.
Just not at the academic expense of grading them out of the quest for their diploma.
“Right now, they’re seeing truck-driving jobs and welding jobs,” he said, “but those jobs aren’t always going to be here.”
Four sessions addressing college and career readiness, teacher preparation, standards and curriculum and matters of family engagement made up the evening.
Mike Kelly, who serves as vice president of the Monongalia County Board of Education, took 21st century family dynamics into account when he said districts should reach out more to grandparents now serving as caregivers — or parents, in effect.
“They can be a real resource,” he said.
Perry, meanwhile, said the forums won’t squander intellectual and emotional resources by discussing teacher paychecks or the possibilities of charter schools, which were voted into law this summer in special session.
“Those things have already been vetted and voted on,” his said. “The listening tours are all about what’s going to be best for our students right now.”
Look for an official position on charter schools by the state board in December, he said.
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