These days must be particularly troubling for Dr. Dilly as Superintendent of Randolph County Schools. We learned last week that Randolph County ranks 55th among the 55 counties in West Virginia, and WV has a strong hold on the title for the worst state on several educational ranking systems for the United States.

Now the WV Board of Education has issued a state of emergency for Randolph County, and the State will take over the management of our county schools unless our Board of Education has a plan to improve the financial situation by December. The State sent efficiency experts to tell us that we do not use 45% of our classroom space, and we are spending too much on personnel in our under-utilized schools. We do not have the number of students to earn the funding that would be necessary to support the schools we have.

These are difficult times in our beautiful little town of Elkins, WV. How can our schools be so bad in a town like Elkins that has a college, a hospital, a library, several City parks, a revitalized business district, and a YMCA? On Saturday we saw the bright side of local school performance when the bands had a great back-to-school Band Corn Roast with music in the City Park, and the Cross Country running teams placed 2nd for the boys and 4th for the girls. Why would anybody want to take their kids out of our schools?

We had a peaceful opening of school with only a little of the usual confusion about who rides which bus and which classes to take, but schools seemed to be very normal. There was no big emergency that we could see this week. The problem is not a matter of wrong doing on the part of our school personnel or our elected officials, and our county school system is not guilty of using the Covid grant money dishonestly.

We need to remember that our financial problems are the result of demographic changes and many of our academic problems have to do with changes in technology. Our schools were built to serve the Baby Boomer generation, and we have not been willing to give up the buildings that serve smaller populations in remote areas. This demographic decline is happening all over the world, but it is exacerbated here by a decline in employment opportunities, and illegal drug use in rural West Virginia.

I do believe that Randolph County Schools were slow to buy new computers during the pandemic, and that we did not have the internet services in place to support online learning at the level that was needed to keep kids actively learning at a normal pace. Teachers also had to stretch to become proficient in teaching with technology. If we invest now in better access to technology and help students in remote areas to get the technology they need at home, we should see significant progress.

It goes without saying that many families are going to have some inconvenience with school consolidation and all adults need to look out for the children who will have to travel further to school. Faculties need to protect the instructional time from too many days out of school for teachers’ meetings, and we need to help working parents with child care before and after school.

Our business community should step up to pass a school levy and give financial support to meet the special needs for teachers and coaches. If our schools are recognized as failing, people will not want to move to Randolph County, but we can make the choices that will make schools and employment better for families.