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Most West Virginians take for granted the administrators running our county school systems understand their job is to educate our children -- and make the decisions that are best for our KIDS, with a distant second priority being the good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.
Too often, neither of those priorities is considered in the decision-making when educational bureaucracy exists to serve itself and its buddies. In the case of three school districts, the problem was so severe that state officials had to intervene.
Upshur, Hampshire and Logan county schools have all been under state Department of Education intervention. When the state Board of Education was briefed on the progress of those interventions Monday, Jeffrey Kelley, the assistant state superintendent of schools for district and school accountability, said the three counties shared similarities.
"Decision makers set aside accountability to appease adults, to make adults happy, and they do so at the expense of student learning and what's best for kids," Kelley said. "That is the one consistent thing that I think existed in all three of those scenarios."
In Upshur County, Christy Miller was appointed by the Department of Education to be superintendent. She said she believes the county is now on a path to be removed from intervention status. But:
"It's been hard, it's been emotional as you could well imagine, and yes, we've probably stepped on toes over the last year, but... kids have to come first," Miller said.
And that's the key. Good administrators (and boards) have to be willing to step on the toes of -- or flat out ignore -- adults who have their own interests and agendas at heart, rather than the education and wellbeing of the children in their communities. They have to be willing to examine spending in a way that prioritizes those children's educations AND the prudent use of taxpayers' money.
It sounds as though progress is being made in Upshur, Hampshire and Logan counties. But districts all over the state must do some soul-searching. Administrators and boards must be willing to scrutinize their own decisions and properly monitor the actions of others within the school system. And they must do those things for the reason many of them say they got into education in the first place. West Virginia's kids MUST come first.