Monongalia County Board of Education member Mike Kelly used a school bus analogy to deliver a facts-of-life message from the board to area lawmakers last week.
Say there are 70 students in that bus, Kelly’s analogy went, when it rolls up to the front of a school.
Thirty students disembark, and that hypothetical bus then cruises off to another school for another drop-off, and another after that.
Either way, the longtime BOE incumbent said, that bus still has to be on the road, doing what it does.
“It’s going to cost the same amount of money to operate it,” Kelly said, “whether it has 70 students or 50 students or 40 students.”
And that was the point, he said.
Mon’s school district still has things it has to do every day, he and his fellow board members said, no matter what.
It has to do that, the BOE said, under the shadow of ongoing enrollment challenges wrought by charter schools.
Work has to commence with ongoing personnel shortages coupled with the emotional stressors students might be bringing from home when they step off that bus and into the main hallway every morning, it said.
Tuesday’s meeting was a Mon BOE signature piece.
Board members always get with lawmakers this time of year for dinner and informal discussion.
Call it a local opening act to the state Legislative session, which gavels in next month in Charleston.
Delegates Joe Statler and Anitra Hamilton sat in for this one, along with Sen. Mike Caputo and Wendy Madden, who does community outreach work for West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin from Capitol Hill.
Statler is a former elected member of the Mon board and also served stints as its president before leaving to pursue state office.
Ready or not, a renaissance
What was Statler’s district, as said — isn’t the same one now.
Those aforementioned charters are now part of the business of teaching and learning here.
And so is the shift from traditional classroom learning to career technical education, which is going to be the big bus in coming years for Mon’s district.
Provided the voters get on board, that is.
Part of Tuesday’s talk was given over to a presentation from the DLR Group.
DLR is the architectural firm designing the Renaissance Academy, a standalone STEM school (science, technology, engineering and math) that would serve students from the county’s three public high schools.
The district wants to have the academy open to students by 2027.
That’s going to take a bond to happen, however.
Citizens are generous to Mon County Schools come election day, traditionally voting in the affirmative for an excess levy for education that brings another $30 million a year to district coffers.
Preliminary estimates put the academy in the $70 million range — but that doesn’t include any unforeseen issues at the planned site for its campus.
That’s on an a 135-acre expanse near Cassville, on a rise overlooking Interstate 79.
Like a lot of such properties across the Mountain State, it was also home to a former strip mine, which might lead to other infrastructure issues, once the earth is turned.
Which could add dollars to a project that’s already a big sell, the BOE said.
Meanwhile, dollars are being taken away from the district every time a local student enrolls in a charter school.
In Morgantown and Monongalia County, that’s the West Virginia Academy.
The West Virginia Academy is the state’s first brick-and-mortar charter school, and its board is already planning a branch campus in neighboring Preston County, based on enrollment interest.
The bus stops here?
Every time a student from the district transfers to that school, or any such school, $4,300 goes, also.
That’s the per-pupil allotment given as part of the state School Aid Formula.
With Morgantown’s charter and the other charters across the state still gaining their academic legs, some students transfer back to their previous home schools, after weeks or months.
The catch, though, is that the state aid money they took with them initially — doesn’t come back with them.
To date, Mon’s district has lost 348 students to the West Virginia Academy, which comes out to $2 million less for public schools, as per the formula.
“Does that concern you?” Caputo asked.
“We’re concerned about the money,” Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr., replied, “because it means resources.”
And, just like Kelly’s hypothetical bus, the district still has to keep going.
No matter what, the superintendent said.
Caputo, meanwhile, will keep going for one more Legislative session.
After this one gavels to a close, so too will his 27-year career in public life. He’s retiring from politics.
If you can’t stop the bus completely, he told the board, you can still take your foot off the gas from time to time.
That’s why he offered up his personal cell phone number to Mon’s BOE, in the event of any issues that might come up at home while lawmakers are convening in Charleston.
“All of West Virginia,” he joked, has that number anyway.
“Send me a text,” he said.
“We can at least get some more people in the room, to maybe slow it down a bit while we talk about it.”
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