The Inter-Mountain photo by Edgar Kelley Randolph County Board of Education members, from left, Janie Newlon, Rachel Anger, and Dr. Phil Chua listen to a speaker during this week’s BOE regular meeting.

ELKINS — State officials met with the Randolph County School Board last week, but both Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly and BOE member Dr. Phil Chua say they still aren’t exactly sure why.

Chua told The Inter-Mountain that, initially, he and the other members of the Board thought the meeting, with officials from the West Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Accountability, was scheduled to discuss the Board’s votes on RIF (reduction in force) recommendations on April 22. The BOE learned after the fact that some of the decisions made at that meeting went against state seniority rules and will have to be rescinded.

However, Chua said the RIF votes were not discussed during the meeting with state officials.

Dilly told The Inter-Mountain this week that he wasn’t involved in the May 2 meeting with the state officials, but noted that it wasn’t called because of anything that happened during the final RIF meeting.

“I really know little about it other than it was scheduled ahead of the vote,” Dilly said. “So they weren’t called because of anything that happened during the RIF process. I don’t know exactly if it’s part of their (state) process before looking at intervention.

“I did formally request guidance from the state department before moving forward, because we are facing an unbalanced budget, which means we cannot make payroll all of this year.”

Chua told The Inter-Mountain that the meeting was very broad, and that state officials never told the Board members exactly why they were in Elkins.

“It really wasn’t anything major, to be honest,” Chua said. “They did ask me if I thought people in the country felt like the state was going to take over the Randolph County Board of Education. It was more basic ‘how are things going’ questions.

Chua recalled state officials asked him four questions during the meeting, with the first one being, why did he run for BOE? He was then asked, what was his vision for Randolph County? What obstacles did he have in that vision? Was he able to get things put on the agenda at meetings?

“They really wouldn’t say why they came to Elkins for the meeting,” Chua said. “We did have a bigger discussion about finance, but I brought that up to them.”

During Tuesday’s regular Board meeting, the BOE scheduled two upcoming special meetings. The first one will be on May 15 and will be used to address the budget and personnel. The second meeting will be May 29 and will be to approve the final budget and personnel actions. Both meetings will be open to the public.

Also during Tuesday’s meeting, Dilly said the state will almost certainly become involved in the Randolph County school system’s operations due to the current budget crisis. He said the school system is still looking at an approximately $1 million hole in next year’s budget.

The next regular Board of Education meeting is scheduled for May 20 at 5:30 p.m.