The majority of speakers said they opposed the BOE’s decision last week to keep the Harman K-12 School open, and to ask questions concerning the county’s budget’s deficit problem moving forward.

Last week’s decisions to keep the Harman and Pickens schools open and not consolidate has left the county with the task of making up an approximate $2 million budget deficit. Randolph County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly’s plan was to close the Harman and Pickens schools and consolidate, which he said would have saved the county the needed funds for the budget.

A host of Randolph County teachers, students, and parents made their way to the podium to speak to the BOE and Dilly during the meeting, which featured close to 100 in attendance.

Elkins High School teacher and athletic director Ross Ware started an online petition this past weekend that calls for the resignation of BOE members Ed Daniels, Dr. Phil Chua, Dr. Sherri Collett and Janie Newlon, the four members who voted to keep Harman School open. A total of 626 people had signed the online petition as of 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Elkins High School teacher and athletic director Ross Ware asserts that the Randolph County Board of Education threw Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly ‘to the wolves’ during a meeting at the EHS Auditorium this week.

“I am coming to you as a parent of Randolph County School students, first and foremost, but I am also employed by Randolph County Schools,” Ware said during the public comment section of Tuesday evening’s meeting. “I’m going to start tonight with another ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m sorry to Dr. Dilly for being thrown to the wolves by this Board of Education.

“You were tasked to create a plan that would keep this county away from state takeover, and you did that. You created a five-year facility plan that would cut our operations down to somewhere around seven buildings on four campuses, I believe.

“Your plan also included a new gym for Tygarts Valley that was promised by a Board member. The thing I can’t figure out is why?” Ware said. “Why were you allowed to do all this work and take all this ridicule for months, just to get voted down 4-1? Why weren’t you told from the beginning that this plan wasn’t going to be supported by the Board and a new plan needed to be created?

“Was this the plan all along? Let this new guy take the heat for months just to vote it down and hope for state takeover? Hope Dr. Dilly resigns because he is not what we wanted anyway?

“We now have two communities that will never support anything Dr. Dilly does for this county. To the Board, as many other people have said, ‘What now?'”

Later during the meeting, Dilly presented a breakdown of where cuts would have to be made in order to make up the budget deficit. The superintendent said there would need to be roughly 32 positions eliminated in order for the county to meet the budget requirements for the 2025-2026 school year.

He said some of the positions that will likely be cut include nurses, career and technical education, math teachers, counselors, librarians, art teachers, physical education teachers, and science teachers.

“I really appreciate everybody’s passion this evening. I really wish folks were engaged like this all the time in education, because it is highly important,” Dilly said.

“We have an important crisis in front of us and challenges and the decisions that we make will have implications for many years to come. Unfortunately, we have had a lot of negative rhetoric, a lot of misinformation presented, a lot of accusations, and a lot of challenges. And I would just encourage some of the sentiments this evening, that we come together.

“Again I’m not saying anything against the Board, by no means,” he said. “I’m saying that the community is hearing a lot of different things that are not productive. We have to find a solution… We may have differences in opinion of where we have to go, but we can do that in a productive way. Name calling, calling people liars, calling people dishonest, I have encountered quite a bit of malicious defamation throughout this process, which is unfortunate because it’s not productive.

“I know we have different opinions about how we move forward,” Dilly said. “We have to make some tough decisions and it’s more important now than ever to come together because our kids need that. And I know the Board has shared that sentiment and I appreciate that.”

After Dilly’s presentation, Chua talked about his decision to vote against closing the Harman School, even though he wasn’t asked or required to speak Tuesday evening.

“I know we have tied you to the brimstone with this decision,” Chua said. “We will work with you anyway we can to try and get through this next year. And at the same time I think going forward we are still going to be talking about consolidations and I think the outlying schools are still going to be part of that conversation.

“I’m the one that mentioned notifying the state ahead of time. Not to have the state take over, but to discuss with the state that we are in a different situation than other counties,” he said. “We are the largest county in the state and we have two schools that fall outside travel restrictions. We have two schools where we can’t transport children in the amount of time that is required by state law…

“As far as the survey going around, I wanted to sign it myself, I’m not joking. And when we didn’t close the schools the other week, there was a pause where I said don’t clap, because we have hurt every kid in this county. We’ve hurt every kid in this county and I know we did and it was not an easy decision.

“It was a very hard decision to make and I’m a person who makes hard life and death decisions on a daily basis, so don’t think for one second this wasn’t a considered decision… But the fact is that this county does not fall within the guidelines that are presented by law.”

Chua apologized to Dilly and Brad Smith, the school system’s director of finance and treasurer.

“God help him (Dilly) and God help Brad, because both of those guys had a vision that we screwed up, honestly, for the next five years,” Chua said. “If you guys want to drag me to Charleston on one of my off weeks I will go down and talk to whomever we need to talk to, including our governor and our state senators, because we need to advocate for all the students in our district and our county.” 

The Inter-Mountain will publish an article detailing other speakers’ comments from this BOE meeting in Friday’s edition.