ELKINS — A host of concerned citizens, parents, and students once again let their voices be heard over the closing of the Harman K-12 School and Pickens K-12 School Tuesday night at the Randolph County Board of Education meeting.

Since the closure proposal was announced, supporters to keep the schools open have come out in full force to BOE meetings. Among those attending this week’s meeting was J.R. Murray, a business owner and member of Explore Randolph County.

Murray, a former Harman resident who now resides in Petersburg, believes schools around the state, especially in Randolph County, are in their current situations because too much money is being spent in administrative positions.

“I want everyone to know that in 2011 Gov. Tomlin ordered an audit of the entire school system in West Virginia and identified over 50 items that needed to be addressed, which would save the state an estimated $70 million,” said Murray. “One of those items was overpaid administrative positions and top heavy administrators. In February of 2013, Senate Bill 259 was introduced with the purpose of driving education dollars and decision making directly to classrooms and teachers, which research proves is the biggest determining factor in raising student achievement. However, it did not address top heavy administrative bureaucracy.”

Murray said a member of the House of Delegates led an effort to change the bill with an amendment to reduce the number of administrators in the public education system.

“He (the delegate) said his move was in response to the Education Efficiency Audit that found that West Virginia’s public education system is too top heavy, only Alaska has more administrators that control the education system.”

Murray added that West Virginia has one administrator for every 419 students, which is much higher than in neighboring states such as Maryland (one for 1,500), Kentucky on for 2,500), Ohio (one for 3,100), and Pennsylvania (1 for 3,600).

“The amendment proposed by (Tim) Armstead and other republicans would require the system to pair down one administrator for every 2,000 students and divert resources into the classrooms,” said Murray. “This would mean that Randolph County would only need one-and-half administrators. We currently have nine, that’s what the website says, but the treasurer says there’s actually eight, which is still one to every 388 students and way over what is needed.”

Murray said that salaries for teachers are determined by the state, but that all other positions in the county are determined by the Board of Education, and that Randolph County has a formula to calculate those numbers.

“Randolph County has a formula that they use to calculate these numbers, in other words the 32 ½ Central Office employees have their salaries approved by the BOE,” said Murray. “These 32 1/2 employees earn $2.6 million for the school year, which represents eight percent of the total county’s salaries. No here’s the kicker, the median income per household in Randolph County is $47,000 for an entire household. The median income for the Board of Education Office is $62,000 per person, not a family, they are way overpaid…If we are paying the Board of Education Central Office employees with taxpayers money and it’s much higher than the median income, something is off.”

Murray said a solution to the problem would be to freeze the employees’ salaries for the next school year.

“We freeze their salaries for the next school year and based on calculations, that would save over $250,000 right there,” said Murray. “In addition, since 2020, there has been a 10 percent reduction in students attending public schools, but in the past five years you have only reduced full-time employees by two percent. Those positions are voted on and approved by the Board of Education members, who were not doing their job properly because they were flushed with COVID money…In reality we should only have 482 full-time employees which would be a reduction of 43 full-time employees. We are being threatened with the laying off 32 employees with the closure, when actually it should be 43 because they are not needed.”

Murray told the BOE that state legislators have reached out to him personally and said they are aware of a dishonest impact statement and the fact that the Board of Education has not done their job in reducing staff when there has been a reduction in students.”

“They said the state will have no problem coming in and reducing your staff if you can’t do your jobs,” Murray said. “Making the decision to lay off employees is never easy or fun. But the treasurer has said that 17 employees would need to be laid off to save $1.2 million. So don’t let the Superintendent scare you with the laying off of 32 employees, because either way you have to lay them off. If you would get a third party audit to come in, not a state auditor, but a third party auditor to show you how to wisely spend tax dollars, I’m sure you can come up with the millions needed to save Harman and Pickens.”

In October, Randolph County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Shawn Dilly proposed to the BOE the closing of both the Harman K-12 School and Pickens K-12 School. The proposal was part of

Dilly’s Reorganization Plan for the county’s schools

If the BOE votes to close Harman K-12, those students will be bussed to Midland Elementary, Elkins Middle School and Elkins High School. Pickens K-12 School students, meanwhile, will be sent to Mill Creek to attend George Ward Elementary and Tygarts Valley Middle/High School.

Public hearings for the closing of the merger of the school are scheduled to take place in January. The hearings for Harman K-12 will all be at the Elkins High School Auditorium and will take place on Jan. 6. The Harman hearing will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and will be followed by the Midland Elementary hearing from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.  Elkins Middle School’s hearing will be from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Elkins High School from 9 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The BOE will vote on the closure of Harman School at 9:30 p.m.

The Pickens K-12 hearings will be held at Tygarts Valley Middle/High School on Jan. 8. The hearing for Pickens will be from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and will be followed by George Ward Elementary from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The Tygarts Valley Middle/High School will be from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. The BOE will vote on the closure of Pickens School between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.