ELKINS — Randolph County’s superintendent of schools said this week that, even if a consolidation plan to close four county schools is approved, personnel cuts will still need to be made to trim the school system’s budget.

In an attempt to work out a plan for schools consolidation, the Randolph County Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly have been meeting for work sessions during both regular and special BOE meetings for the past month.

During the most work session, during Tuesday evening’s BOE meeting, Dilly asked Brad Smith, Randolph County Schools’ treasurer and director of finance and purchasing, to provide a report to the BOE.

“Mr. Smith and I have been working on a lot of the numbers,” Dilly said. “As I’ve shared in the past, the numbers we have been providing were preliminary. We have been slowly refining them and I would not say that 100% refined numbers at this point, because they are still based on professional service averages. What they’re indicating is kind of the operational cost minus if we were to close a building, and how much savings would come about from that particular aspect.”

Smith provided a power-point presentation to the BOE featuring detailed numbers associated with proposed school reorganization, and general fund expenses at each building. Smith told the BOE that personnel made up most of the county’s expenses.

“Building closure is minimal to your savings,” Smith told the Board. “It’s in personnel. So you have to get your class sizes to the point that you begin to be able to cut personnel… Ninety percent of each facility is salary. You don’t get a lot of savings by closing the actual building. At least on the surface.”

Dilly said the school closures, however, would allow the school system to reconfigure to maximize class sizes and staffing utilization. He added that the four-school closure model for consolidation is far from achieving the financial goals Randolph County Schools is seeking.

“With it being roughly under $3 million, we still have roughly a million more to make up,” Dilly said. “Then where you would have to cut that would be essentially our secondary schools. On a rough estimate you would be looking at roughly 13 and half professional positions to cut to achieve that additional million in savings. And I’m not sure where we could do a handful of positions at. It would be difficult to do 13 and half positions without further consolidations considered.”

Smith explained that his numbers are projections and can change depending on different circumstances, such as enrollment and how many teachers would actually be cut if schools were to consolidate.

“It all comes down to numbers,” Smith said. “So does that 23 plus 24 kids make you have to add a third teacher, or do you still get by with two? Or is there a chance that where you had three (teachers) and you can drop it to two? Based on this set of projections, if you closed the four schools that have been discussed it would be roughly $2.9 million in savings.”

As part of his report, Smith also pointed out that, with consolidation, there may not be enough room in some of the schools for the amount of students that would be going to a particular school.

Dilly responded by saying, “These are some elements that we are trying to navigate and figure out right now, trying to understand, can we fit everybody in there and make this work to achieve the financial challenges that we have in front of us.”

Smith ended by saying, “I’m just trying to give a picture countywide of where we sit with everything. And really illustrating the fact that personnel is where it is and that’s where it has been. We just had COVID money to pay for it before.”

Randolph County Schools was placed in a State of Emergency by the West Virginia Department of Education in June. The school district will remain on probation for a total of six months, and faces the possibility of a state takeover if it cannot create a balanced budget or show progress by December.

The next Randolph County Board of Education regular meeting is scheduled for Sept. 2 at 5:30 p.m.