ELKINS — This week, the superintendent of Randolph County Schools suggested that a bond proposal or levy vote should be considered to help fund school system projects.

“I thought it was important to start discussing some of the next steps in the future of Randolph County Schools,” Dr. Shawn Dilly said during Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting. “I think we have an opportunity in May to consider a bond or a levy vote and what I would like to know from the Board this evening, is that something we want to do.”

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 proposed closing six county schools to balance the budget, but on Oct. 28, the BOE voted against closing Coalton and Midland elementary schools, which Dilly had proposed.

The BOE had voted Oct. 8 to close Harman K-12 School and North Elementary School.

On Oct. 14, a public hearing and vote on the closure of Pickens K-12 School was canceled approximately 90 minutes before it was slated to take place. Dilly announced on social media that the hearing had been canceled after the discovery of “new information related to funding, as well as ongoing community effort that may support keeping Pickens open for an additional year.”

On Tuesday, Dilly spoke on “the future of Randolph County Schools,” telling the BOE there are deadlines in December that the BOE must meet if they want to run a bond proposal or levy vote with the May 2026 primary election.

“It’s not necessarily the best or ideal situation and these are just some ideas that are being thrown out there for consideration at this point,” Dilly said. “And if there is interest in this board, what I would encourage us to think about doing is perhaps, since there is such a short timeline, to at least kind of get a shell of a program to the SBA. Perhaps setting up a work session next week just for further discussion… I just wanted to approach this board with that this evening. And if the answer is no, the answer is no.”

Board President Rachel Burns was the first to respond, saying, “I feel like now, with the government shutdown and food insecurity, you know, it just feels like it not the right time to be asking, you know, almost a little bit elitist of me to be asking.

“I think all of those things are worthy and wonderful things, um, and I know I’ll be the first to say that I know Midland and Beverly need to consolidate, even though my vote did not reflect that,” she said. “I felt that we needed to give Beverly just a little time to get their feet underneath them with them being designated a CIS (Communities in School program) school… And I struggled to see how Coalton would fit into Third Ward well without an exact exit plan. So I will be very clear that was my thought process on all of that. I will certainly give this thoughtful consideration, but I think it’s a big ask for our community right now.”

Board member Phil Chua disagreed.

“I think we probably should do something,” Chua said. “Because if you are going to try to get some of these things built, you have to start fairly soon making those plans to do it. And to ask the SBA (School Building Authority) to fund this, you have to show you are looking ahead and trying to get things done.”

Board member Sherri Collett mentioned the work session Dilly requested and said she would like the public to be more involved with the process.

“I feel like we need a community town hall meeting where the community can actually respectfully ask questions and we answer questions,” Collett said. “Because the community does not understand all of the little bits and pieces.”

“I did not hear a consensus for a decision to move forward on a bond or a levy at this point,” Dilly said. “Do you want to discuss it at the next regular meeting or have a work session… If the desire is to do community meetings following up, then there is probably limited to no chance to meet some of the deadline requirements for the May election. We would have to move to the next election for that.”

The BOE agreed to have a work session meeting next week to discuss the levy issue. It has been set for 5:30 p.m. on Monday at the BOE office.