ELKINS — Randolph County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly presented the Board of Education with a new consolidation plan during the first of two Special Meetings held over the past week at the Central Office.

The first Special Meeting was held on July 22 and Dilly presented a new plan to the BOE after meeting with the county’s Principals to draft a new reconfiguration proposal based on their discussion.

“I think the best word we can come up with is a compromise, because not everybody’s happy with every part of it,” Dilly said. “But we think this is probably the best approach that we think we can try and do. We realize that it may not achieve all of our financial goals, so we may have to make some minor adjustments to it, but I want to go ahead and express to you what we developed in conversations.”

Randolph County Schools was placed in a State of Emergency by the West Virginia Department of Education back in June. That tag will remain in place for a total of six months, during which time Randolph County Schools must create a balanced budget and come up with a progress update to present to the state BOE in December.

“This plan is one that I think is similar to what we’ve been sharing, but has a few little different elements and a little different configuration,” Dilly said. “But this was sort of the compromise that we talked about as a way to try and find a path forward that again, not everybody is happy with.”

Phase 1 of the new reconfiguration plan would be for the 2027-28 school year. The new plan would move fifth grade elementary students from Beverly, Coalton, Harman, Jennings Randolph, Midland, Third Ward, and North to Elkins Middle School, which would be a fifth through eighth grade campus.

“Moving the elementary schools to Elkins Middle School would create some room in our elementary schools and that would also include the fifth grade being moved from George Ward over into Tygarts Valley,” Dilly said. “What we would be looking at for that purpose is then to be looking at Third Ward, Jenning Randolph, and Beverly Elementary Schools along with Coalton staying in place. Looking at North and Midland being basically separated, we are going to be rezoning everything. We have to look at rezoning all the Elkins area to try and make this plan work. But we knew we would have to rezone no matter which plan we choose.”

With the plan Harman would become a kindergarten through fourth grade school. The fifth grade through eight grade students in Harman would be moved to Elkins Middle School and the nine through 12 Elkins High School. Dilly said there may also be a secondary option for a virtual school program for Harman students.

“Again, some of this is contingent on if we can reach our financial goals and that’s some of the stuff we are going to try to work on over the next couple of weeks to try and get some elements of this together,” Dilly said.

Similar to the plan for Harman, Pickens would continue to house kindergarten through fourth grade students. Fifth through eighth grade students would move to Buckhannon-Upshur Middle School and high school students to B-UHS. Virtually learning is also a possibility for Pickens students.

Phase 2 for the plan is highlighted by the construction of a new Middle School next to Elkins High School and the Vo Tech Center. That building would open in the fall of 2029 and would be for fifth through eighth grade students in the county.

“We would be doing this in hopes of building a bond call for May of 2026,” Dilly said. “This plan would not be contingent on that bond passing, but we would hope that our community would support it..”

According to Dilly, Phase 3 of the plan could take place anywhere between 2029 and 2035. The plan would be to move the Middle School and High School students from Tygarts Valley to Elkins once the new Middle School was constructed.

“A lot of that is going to be based on what our enrollment picture looks like,” Dilly said. “This would allow us to be basically down to five schools in the county which would allow us to be very sustainable moving forward into the future.”

Dilly said time is not on the side of Randolph County Schools when it comes to getting a plan in place.

“We’re running quickly out of time to make a final decision,” Dilly said. “We are going to work on developing this plan a little further based on our school leadership team’s recommendations to see what we can do to try and make this work. We felt like this was a compromise to support all of our communities in a way, maybe not in a way they 100 percent like, but could at least address some of the concerns with the youngest children riding the buses for longer distances and some of those elements.”

The second Special Meeting was held on Wednesday and was tabbed as a Work Session. The next regular Board of Education meeting will be held Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Central Office.