Preston continues to lose enrollment

KINGWOOD — Preston County schools continue to lose enrollment, which leads to large differences in class sizes between schools.
At the most recent Preston County Board of Education meeting, the board held a personnel hearing for a Kingwood Elementary fourth grade teacher whose position is being eliminated.
It boils down to money, Preston School Superintendent Steve Wotring said in a later interview. The state funds county school positions based on enrollment of the previous year.
Other than 10 teaching positions funded by the levy, all of Preston’s salaries come from state funding. Each levy position is used based on where there’s the greatest need, Wotring said, and that can change.
“We will be watching countywide the numbers of those classes that we’re very close on,” Assistant Superintendent Ange Varner said at the hearing.
Preston lost about 36 students this year, the year before that, 105. The most recent decline resulted in loss of funding for 3.4 professional positions.
And the impact on the budget is real. One reason Preston went into the red before the state takeover in 2009 was that the county was paying more personnel than were funded by the state, Wotring said.
The student decline isn’t all in one grade or one school. That leads to the numbers game administrators play to place staff.
The state formula doesn’t address that. and under a 1980s era state law, Preston is only allowed three split classrooms.
This year there is a kindergarten/first grade classroom and fourth/fifth grade classroom at Rowlesburg. There’s a kindergarten/first grade split class at Fellowsville.
Currently there are 17 students in the Rowlesburg K/1 split total — five kindergarten and 12 first graders. To date, only four students have enrolled for kindergarten next year.
“So I’ll have nine kids for two classes. Which eats up an entire teacher,” Wotring said. This year Fellowsville had four students in second grade, but there were no more split classroom options available so they had one teacher.
In comparison, teachers at Kingwood Elementary fourth grade will have 24 students each next year.
“There isn’t a good way to justify that except the law is the law,” Wotring agreed. “I went the route that I thought I needed to go a couple years ago and the board said no. So I can’t work outside that.”
Two years ago Wotring recommended closing Fellowsville and Rowlesburg Schools. The board refused.
Fellowsville is pre-K through fifth and has about 80 students. Rowlesburg is K-8 and has about the same enrollment.
The only schools not losing enrollment are West Preston, with more than 700 students, and Bruceton, which will require a fourth pre-K program this fall.
While good, “It can’t counteract the loss we have had everywhere else in the county,” Wotring said.
Terra Alta lost 60 kids in two years. Kingwood Elementary, which once averaged 90 students per grade, is down to 60 per grade, with the exception of the 71 in the upcoming fourth grade.
Wotring expects the decline in enrollment to continue.
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