ELKINS — Randolph County Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly gave the Board of Education an update on the district’s State of Emergency status during Tuesday’s regular meeting at the Central Office.

“Because of the amount of information and school closures that was related to the December meeting, they (State BOE) pushed the State of Emergency discussions to January,” Dilly said. “At that point I will be asked to come down and present, I’m still waiting on the guidance on what I’m supposed to present in January.”

The West Virginia Department of Education placed Randolph County Schools in a State of Emergency for a six-month duration back in June. In November, Dilly told The Inter-Mountain that he believed the issue would be discussed during the State’s December meeting, but it was not addressed.

The West Virginia Department of Education currently has no date or time listed for January’s meeting. It voted unanimously at its last meeting on Dec. 10 to close the Harman K-12 School North Elementary.

Dilly told the Randolph Board of Education that he went back and looked at the provisions of the district’s plans and what the expectations were from the State Board of Education.

“I’m a little concerned due to the fact that even with the school closures, we are not doing well with personnel numbers,” Dilly said. “The early numbers are not official yet, we are waiting on our preliminary counts. Much of this is to do with the loss of enrollment for certain.”

Dilly said that the district was currently sitting at 27 over formula for service personnel and 21.5 over formula for professionals. He added that Randolph County also had 13 positions that were unfunded, which brought the total to 61.5 positions over formula.

“The closures and mergers that were approved by this board are going to equate to somewhere between 20 and 25 positions, leaving us roughly 40 to 41 positions short of us meeting our goal. So the personnel season is going to be critical for our county to balance the budget moving forward.”

Board member Phil Chua responded by saying, “I think this is why we were trying to close four schools. This was anticipated.”

Dilly said, “It’s worse than I anticipated, but it’s part of why I was pushing for four schools…So it means we have to have other difficult conversations moving forward. I just wanted to give you these, once we get the preliminary coms from the state level, we’ll give you the final numbers. But, after seeing these I thought it was important to make this Board aware of the difficult position we’re in right now.”

Back on Oct. 8, the Randolph BOE voted to close Harman and North Elementary Schools. Three weeks later it voted to keep Coalton and Midland Elementary Schools both open. 

Pickens School was also set to have a closure hearing in October, but that hearing was canceled just hours before it was slated to begin due to “new information related to funding, as well as ongoing community effort that may support keeping Pickens open for an additional year.”     

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During Tuesday’s meeting, Dilly wanted to remind the public that a survey concerning potential bond and levy proposals will be available on the Randolph County Schools webpage at boe.rand.k12.wv.us. until Feb. 13. Those interested in taking the survey can do so by using a link at the site or a QR code.

The next Randolph County Board of Education meeting is scheduled for Jan. 6 at 5:30 p.m.