ELKINS — Randolph County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly gave the Board of Education an update on the county’s enrollment at the most recent BOE meeting.

Dilly provided new numbers to start the school year, and later in the meeting dipped into the role artificial intelligence may play and how it will affect students in the future.

“I don’t think folks are fully grasping how fast we are losing enrollment,” Dilly said while providing a powerpoint presentation. “As you can see, our school’s sizes have significantly shrunk over the years.”

Dilly’s presentation listed all the county’s schools and each one’s current enrollment, including: Elkins High School with 736 students, Elkins Middle School with 572, Tygarts Valley Middle/High School with 366, George Ward Elementary with 333, Third Ward Elementary with 331, Jennings Randolph Elementary with 204, North Elementary with 188, Midland Elementary with 183, Beverly Elementary with 182, Coalton Elementary with 146, Harman Elementary/High School with 93, Pickens Elementary/High School with 27, and the Randolph County Alternative Center with 5.

“Students per grade level are some of the elements that have to be considered as we go forward,” Dilly said. “They are relatively consistent, roughly in the 200 to 250 range. Across most grade levels there are some ups and downs, but  we did see a little bit of growth in kindergarten this year, which was not anticipated, but we were pleased to see.”

Dilly revealed that the county has 115 fewer students this year. A year ago there were 3,487

students enrolled in county schools, while this year’s number to start the school year is 3,372.

“One hundred and fifteen students equates to just under a million dollars in state aid loss,” Dilly said. “From 2016 and 2017 we have seen a slow steady decline in enrollment… The 682 students we’ve lost over that time equates to $5.4 million in revenue loss. And yet we’ve tried to operate all the same buildings and all the same approaches to schools… You can’t run a system that is losing revenues faster than we are reducing costs. And that’s the reality that we are in.”

Dilly then shifted gears to talk about AI, and predictions that 65% of students entering primary schools today will work in jobs that don’t yet exist.

“A challenge we are having in education is how do we prepare our kids,” Dilly said. “We have got to be investing in preparation for them, to make sure that they’re facing this reality with the tools and skills necessary, because it is changing far faster than I think anybody recognizes.”

Dilly said the biggest change and development for the future is going to be with the use of Generative AI.

“What we have seen with just Generative AI in the last five years is that those large language models have completely transformed how a lot of people do work,” Dilly said. “We’ve seen the implementation of multimodal AI, which means basically the audio and video elements are coming together. And now AI augmented workflows, like ChatGPT, chat agent, and other elements are coming into place. This is going to have a significant impact on our young people that are trying to enter jobs.”

Dilly added that rates for college graduates finding jobs are down significantly due to the jobs being replaced by AI.

“It (AI) isn’t at its peak by any means at this point, but we are already starting to see some of those predictions as we go forward,” Dilly said. “I think one of the pieces you are going to see within the next year or maybe two is domain specific AI.

“I know some of our Board members are doctors – you are going to see a lot more integration of AI into those elements. We are seeing AI robotics integration… I saw where you can actually buy robots from China for between $5,000 and $10,000, personal robots. That’s crazy to me to think that we are there already.”

The superintendent said the next big step when it comes to AI will be Artificial General Intelligence.

“That is where basically the AI is going to be at a human level reasoning across many domains,” Dilly said. “And this is a significant challenge not only for us ethically but where do we stand as human beings and working with our children, making sure they are prepared for an AGI element that is part of what we are doing. Because we will never be able to be more efficient than an AGI as far as out-thinking or being able to do some of these elements.”

Dilly predicted there will be major changes in education because of the use of AI.

“We are already seeing it. There are probably 50 to 100 schools right now operating with AI as the primary teacher across the world right now,” Dilly said. “I think that number is going to exponentially grow and continue to have an impact on what we do.

“I think one of the challenges we have as a rural community is having access to experts in these fields because most of these things are being done in Silicon Valley or larger city areas.”

The next Randolph County Board of Education meeting will be today at 5:30 p.m.