ELKINS — More than 500 residents have taken part in a survey about Randolph County Schools, the schools superintendent announced.

Dr. Shawn Dilly said during a Randolph County Board of Education work session last week that 570 responses to the survey had been received at that point.

The survey, which was posted online Aug. 1, requests community input on proposed school closures and consolidations in Randolph County.

“The vast majority of our 570 responses indicated that they did want to see Randolph County retain control of our educational decisions,” Dilly said. “We anticipated we would see that, but we wanted to go ahead and ask that question.”

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.

Dilly highlighted some of the results of the survey, beginning with the question, which of the following best describes your role in Randolph County?

“We see that 50 percent indicated that they were a parent or guardian,” Dilly said. “The next largest group was community members without children in Randolph County. And we appreciate their input because it matters as taxpayers as well. Only about 10% indicated that they were teachers or instructional staff. My guess is there’s also some parents that marked themselves as parents that were actually staff. I would have hoped for a higher response from our teachers as well, but that is what we have indicated on this response thus far.”

Dilly gave the results from the question, which schools are you most closely associated with?

“The vast majority of the respondents out of the 570 responses were Tygarts Valley Middle/High School, Elkins Middle School and Elkins High School,” Dilly said. “So we see a large number of participants there.”

Only 5% of participants indicate they were from Harman and just 3% from Pickens. Those two schools are likely to be the most affected under the superintendent’s most recent plan.

In the consolidation proposal, Harman would become a kindergarten through fourth-grade school, while fifth-grade through eighth-grade students in Harman would be moved to Elkins Middle School. Ninth-grade through 12th grade students attending Harman would be sent to Elkins High School. 

Pickens would also continue to house kindergarten through fourth-grade students, while fifth-grade through eighth-grade students would move to Buckhannon-Upshur Middle School in Upshur County, and high school students also would be transported to Buckhannon-Upshur High School. 

Dilly addressed the survey question, how familiar are you with the district’s proposed reconfiguration and closure plan?

“I thought this was a significant win in a sense,” he said. “Whether they liked it or not, they are at least familiar and feel that they understand what we were proposing, which I thought is always a good thing when folks are understanding what we are attempting to do. So we see a large percentage that said they were very familiar or moderately familiar.”

Dilly told the BOE that there were mixed results to the question, do you support or oppose a configuration plan?

“They are leaning a little bit toward strongly opposed, but again that’s very anticipated,” Dill said. “Nobody wants to close their school. I don’t want to close any of them but I don’t know how we can do it in our financial situation without closing something. If you look at the percentage of responses you can see that obviously Harman and Coalton indicated (being opposed), as well as a few others who shared their opposition.”

Dilly said that increased travel times, safety, loss of community identity and traditions, and class sizes were among the top concerns for those who completed the survey.

“Class sizes were one of the top concerns listed at 18% of those individuals,” Dilly said. “Layoffs were a concern, impact on property values, and uncertainty about the quality of education during transition… With travel times there’s a lot of folks showing very concerned and somewhat concerned and this is a challenge that there’s no easy answers for as we go forward. One of the things we’ve looked at doing is adding an additional bus to reduce that time and those are some of the things we are trying to plan out as we go forward to try to minimize the impact of bus travel time.”

One of the final survey questions Dilly addressed was whether or not the community would support the district issuing a bond or tax levy to fund the construction of the new middle school and facility upgrades.

“Thirty-six percent said yes they would support it and 31% said no,” Dilly said. “Then we had 20 to 25% that were undecided and needed more information. Obviously at this point it’s very early, but what that indicates to me is there is 51% potentially there. So even if we don’t do it, it would be difficult to go to the SBA (School Building Authority) and request funding if we didn’t at least try. So it would depend on what we tried to build and put together. But we are also looking at what we could provide for Elkins High School, some of those upgrades that are necessary and needed, as well as the other schools we are trying to keep long-term.”

The online survey is still available on the Randolph County Schools website (https://boe.rand.k12.wv.us) for those wishing to participate. The next regular Board of Education meeting will be Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Central Office.