Do you believe new or updated school facilities impact the economic development of Monongalia County?
Will Mon’s current schools be able to adapt to the needs of the average student, say, three decades from now?
For that matter, will brick-and-mortar school buildings even be necessary, come then?
The above is just a sampling of the brow-furrowers related to life in Monongalia County Schools that groups of teachers, principals, students and others took up Wednesday.
Said groups met in sessions to discuss the re-tweaking of the district’s Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan, which must be submitted to the state Department of Education for final approval in June.
Known as the CEFP, the document is a 10-year series of goals and proposed benchmarks to see the district through 2030.
The CEFP is an infrastructure owner’s manual, of sorts.
It projects out for classroom renovations and the construction of new buildings — which may (or may not) become obsolete in the not-so-distant future as digital learning becomes more of the learning-norm.
“Well, it’s a challenge, but we have been successful,” Barbara Parsons said Wednesday night at South Middle School.
Parsons is the former Board of Education president and steering committee co-chair who was overseeing the “community dialogue” session at South.
University High School was the site of an earlier gathering that day.
Other sessions will be in April at Clay-Battelle High School and Morgantown High.
Crowd noise from a basketball game in the gym down the hall could be heard as the
group set about its work on the 2020-30 edition of the document.
These days, teachers are often de facto social workers, Parsons said.
More and more, she said, schools are a safe haven for youngsters in sometimes unstable environments.
“It’s almost like the question should be, ‘What do want our schools not to do?’ ”
You can take the survey online by visiting boe.mono.k12.wv.us/ and clicking on the “CEFP” link.
“We need every voice,” she said.
