ELKINS — Randolph County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly discussed the possible funding repercussions of looming state Senate and House bills with the Board of Education this week.

“I wanted to provide you with a Legislative update,” Dilly said at Tuesday night’s meeting. “I’ve been working closely with our local representatives and I was even on a phone call at seven o’clock this morning trying to help navigate some thoughts with them and help them. I think it’s important that we continue to have important dialogue.”

“Obviously a lot of them are well-intended, but I don’t think everyone always understands the potential implications, and potential challenges, with some of those,” Dilly said.

Senate Bill 581 would amend and re-enact the Code of West Virginia to address school attendance and student participation in 4-H activities.

“I’m a big proponent of 4-H, but then my concerns stem around equity, and a sense of what about other organizations?” said Dilly. “How do we ensure that we are meeting all of those things? I’m challenging our legislative representatives to go through those pieces before we OK some of these bills.”

Dilly said House Bill 2515, which is similar to Senate Bill 199, both have to do with elementary behavioral intervention and safety.

“I believe House Bill 2515 was just approved last night or the night before and I’ve shared a lot of the concerns that I have,” said Dilly. “My real concern is the language within the bill, I have a lot of concerns with federal law and Section 504 and the IEP components. I also have issues surrounding the implementation of potential overuse and abuse of this particular aspect of the authority being given to K through 6 teachers surrounding concerns of behavior and extreme behavior in the classroom.”

“If a bunch of teachers start throwing a bunch of students out, where do we support them at, where do we house them at with limited ALC (Alternative Learning)?” he said.

BOE member Phil Chua asked Dilly, “We don’t have an elementary ALC, do we?”

Dilly responded, “We are working on putting something together for next year and obviously that has been challenged with this situation… It’s something we absolutely need and with the parents speaking this evening, I think that’s a key indicator that we have to get this solved on behalf of the students…

“I’m hopeful with our unusual nature this year, we are able to do some things we are hoping to do and can at least build a start of a program. But again, if the appropriate checks and balances aren’t placed in this bill, we could have 120 students sitting over there in the elementary ALC. That would be a real problem for us.”

Board member Sherri Collett told Dilly she has been following House Bill 2515 and Senate Bill 199 and stated there was “no funding connected to it.”

“There is not and that’s part of the problem,” said Dilly. “It’s an unfunded mandate and districts that have a K to 12 ALC’s, it’s not as much of an issue, but for us, we barely get one position covered by ALC funding.

“So we are trying to figure that out as we move forward. But again, we recognize that there is an absolute need for it in our District as we’ve had a number of challenges surfacing this year. I can’t speak to prior years, but this year I can speak to quite a few cases where we need some alternative types of support for some of our children.”