Nancy Walker, the longest-tenured member of the Monongalia County Board of Education, who is stepping down this summer after 28 years in her elected post, asked her fellow board members and school district officials Tuesday to revisit The Renaissance Academy.
Such a return trip would be a post-mortem call, she said.
Speaking near the end of the evening’s regular meeting, Walker called for the commissioning of a “voter engagement poll” – to better glean why the bond measure that would have built Mon’s first-ever stand-alone STEM school went down to such of a resounding defeat during the primary election two weeks ago.
“What were their top reasons?” she asked.
Only around 30% of county voters said yes to the $142.6 million measure for the school, which would have offered deep dives into science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses.
Enhanced career technical education offerings would have also been part of the day-to-day of the school that would have been open to any student in the county, whether they attended Mon’s schools, a charter school, private school or were home-schooled.
Ideally, the poll would be fronted by the DLR Group, the architectural firm tasked with designing the school, she said.
“We’d like to know their top reasons why,” Walker said of the voters who didn’t support the initiative.
Such a poll would also help the district and the board better learn what it could have done better in the messaging, she said.
“I heard everything from ‘I thought it was a charter school because academy was in the name,’ to ‘I didn’t know my child could go,’” the board member continued.
Walker bemoaned “the general air of confusion” that hung over both the debate and pitch for the school, she said.
“The only thing that everyone did seem to understand,” she said, “was that their taxes were going to increase at some level.”
Which, of course, was the heart of the argument for the voters who said no.
The measure, those voters said, was too pricey and would have put even more of a tax burden on already strapped households in a county that already traditionally supports education.
An excess levy that annually brings an additional $30 million to the school district coffers almost always passes when it’s up for renewal, they added.
That money, though, was also the counter-argument for those in favor of The Renaissance Academy.
For Mon Schools, proponents elaborated, it was a matter of one getting what one pays for – with the local district regularly leading “best-of” categories in a state where test scores generally flounder.
The STEM school, the voters in the affirmative said, would have only enhanced Mon’s mission.
Meanwhile, Mon’s board is changing in July.
Walker won’t be there, and current BOE president Ron Lytle, who lost his bid for re-election in that same primary, won’t be either.
The idea of The Renaissance Academy will still be around, though, she said.
So will the state and country’s new emphasis on STEM education, the outgoing incumbent said, as students continue to define and redefine what they want after high school, in terms of post-secondary instruction.
She’s sure that a future Mon school board, be it a year from now or 10 years from now, will again take up the STEM school mission – if only because of the above shifts in the learning landscape.
“Public education has to remain relevant,” she said.
