ELKINS — Randolph County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly offered two additional scenarios for reorganizing the county’s schools during this week’s Board of Education meeting.

On June 24, Dilly introduced three possible school reconfiguration plans to the BOE. At this week’s meeting, he added two more.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, Dilly first discussed his six-school approach, which would turn Elkins High School into Elkins Middle/High School, supporting grades seventh through 12th. Under this configuration, the Elkins area would have only two elementary schools, located at the current Midland and Third Ward schools. Both of those schools would be Pre-K to 2nd grade.

Also under this approach, Elkins Middle School would become Elkins Intermediate School for students grades three through six. George Ward in Mill Creek would become a Pre-K to fourth-grade school, while fifth-grade students from George Ward would go to Tygarts Valley High/Middle School.

“There’s good and bad with all of these and I think one of the challenges that you’re going to run into long term is the continuous decline in enrollment at that end of the county, especially with the secondary school (George Ward),” Dilly said.

Dilly said the increasing amounts of time students will have to spend on school buses is one of the things that will have an effect on each one of the approaches.

“As we consolidate, one of the things we are going to have to look at is the increase in bus times,” Dilly said. “But at the same time, we will increase efficiency in a lot of our other areas because we’re not going to be going to multiple schools. We are going to be going to more campus-based approaches.”

Dilly noted the age of the school buildings will be an issue in reorganization.

“There’s no building that is really new in Randolph County, so everything has needs associated with it,” Dilly said. “So that’s one of the things we are concerned about. I think there’s some potential real benefit as far as our human capital or staffing that we are using, and how we could reorganize those with some of the reductions, because some of the reductions in operations would allow us to maintain higher levels of staffing, which I think is a real benefit when we want to think about things like PRO officers, social workers and a school nurse at every building.”

BOE member Phil Chua asked Dilly what would happen to the rural schools as part of the reorganization plans.

“Just for clarification, will all of these scenarios result in the closure of our rural schools?” Chua asked. 

Dilly responded, “Well, this is the problem you run into and I don’t see how, I mean the Board can go ahead and ask us to keep those, but when you’re looking at numbers, the challenge you run into, because even looking at the elementary schools, if you kept, for example, Harman and you did a K to three model, you’re looking at only 23 students.

“If you are going K through six, you’re talking roughly 48 students. Not that we are opposed to it by any means, but just, when you’re talking about building utilization, you’re talking about your staffing needs, your different things.

“We’ve tried to put together scenarios that essentially affect the whole county to get us in a position that we are long-term going to be in a good position,” Dilly said. “But I do think we still have the opportunity to work with these communities to put perhaps a facilitator there, with a virtual school program with a live teacher on the other side that we now have available to us as options for our remote communities”

Dilly talked about his second scenario, a seven-school approach, which is very similar to the six-school approach other than some changes at the elementary school level, where Jennings Randolph Elementary would become a Pre-K school.

“The challenge there again … is having an exclusive school Pre-K where you are traveling clear across the district for one school location,” Dilly said.

Scenario 3 of the reorganization plan is the “one high school” approach, under which Elkins High School would serve as the only high school in the county.

“Scenario 3 I think is pretty controversial but I think it has to be considered,” Dilly said. “This is looking to move to one high school, which essentially closes Tygarts Valley Middle/High School and consolidates those, and leaves George Ward pre-K to fourth grade.

“Jennings, Midland, Third Ward and North will be retained and then we are looking at a future plan to build consolidated (elementary) schools,” he said. “The challenges I think, with this one, doesn’t necessarily give us the initial financial gain that we would need to do in the first phase of this, but I put this out there just because I think we have to lay every idea, good or bad, on the table.”

Dilly said under Scenario 3, Elkins High School would have roughly 975 students, and Elkins Middle School, which would be grades 5 through 8, would have approximately 623 kids.

The superintendent added two more scenarios at this week’s meeting. The biggest takeaway with the fourth scenario would be the construction of a new middle school in Elkins, built in close proximity to EHS.

“We would take the old one (Elkins Middle School) and turn it into a primary building, which is something I think we could consider doing,” Dilly said. “This way all of your middle and high school is out at the campus, which I think would help facilitate access to the fields and things like that.”

Under Scenario 5, Coalton, Harman, Pickens, North Elementary and Midland Elementary would all close.

“What we would do with Phase 2 of this concept would be approaching to run a bond and pursuing to build a four-to-six grade school where the Midland location is,” Dilly said. “Basically we would be supporting fourth through 12th grade on one campus location, which would save us a great deal of elements to help support that.”

Dilly told the BOE that everything he presented to them could be changed and that he was looking forward to hearing their ideas.

The next BOE meeting is scheduled for July 15 at 5:30 p.m.