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State Senator Robbie Morris was our special guest for the August First Friday Focus on Education meeting at Kump Education Center. He explained Senate Bill 516 for providing a new formula to increase tax funding for students in remote rural schools. He introduced this bill as a new legislator in the winter session, but it never got beyond the finance committee.
On Tuesday, the Randolph County Board of Education had a visit from state efficiency experts to explain why our county has Emergency Status with the West Virginia School Board. Our local B)E has six months to come up with a plan to trim the budget or the State will take over and do it.
Our local school board is not guilty of any egregious malfeasance, but population trends have been working against us for the last 50 years or more. Population decline is happening all over the world, but West Virginia is the epicenter center of 21st population decline in the USA, and WV has the lowest national education ranking with Randolph County test scores among the lowest. Our Randolph County Schools have huge financial burdens with the largest land area in the state, a very sparse population, and a large percentage of Special Education students.
Our schools were built for the Baby Boomers. In the 1950s when my mother was on the school board, they could not build enough classrooms. Now with changes in the West Virginia job market, we are losing young families faster than we can revise the school system to meet the expectations of parents who still want to live in our remote rural county.
Over the last five years Randolph County has lost 400 students. Some of these families have moved out of state, but many have gone to private schools or started home schooling. Regardless of the reasons, our school population is lower, but the cost of running our schools is higher.
The Inter-Mountain reported that Facilities Director Witlow said Randolph County Schools used 74.9% of our facilities 15 years ago, but now we use only 55% of these facilities.
Almost half of county school space is not in use now after the "Hope Scholarship" began offering tax dollars to parents who choose to leave public schools for other options to educate their children. Decline in population has been happening for two generations, but now as technology becomes more necessary and federal funding is declining so rapidly, it is difficult to determine what students will really need to know and be able to do in the next 25 years.
Alexandra Criner, Director of the WVDE Office of Accountability, said that our local BOE needs to form a collaborative leadership team to work with Superintendent Dilly in order to create a plan for consolidation of county schools by December. I hope this leadership team will include private citizens, business community members and Senator Morris. who also leads the Randolph County Development Authority.