Education Week - December 9, 2015 - 14

State-Driven School Consolidation Plan Roils W. Va. District
said Tom Campbell, a state board
member who voted against the plan,
and also a member of the state's
School Building Authority. "The way
education is done in West Virginia
is a few people in [the state capital
of ] Charleston say, 'This is the way
it's going to be, and that's the way
it's going to be.' ... This is a recipe
for disaster."
The intractable and politically
fraught power struggle between
state officials and citizens in Fayette County highlights the challenges state superintendents face
when they try to wrest control from
local politicians to turn around ailing districts.
State superintendents in New
Jersey, Michigan, Louisiana, and
Tennessee, for example, have taken
control of failing urban schools
over the years, either running
them directly or handing them
over to charter school operators, a
process that's faced heavy criticism
from local community groups and
been described as undemocratic
and ineffective. Such conflicts also
crop up when school leaders seek
to shut down underenrolled buildings that matter greatly to local
communities.
While some superintendents attempt to work with local politicians
to devise a plan everyone can agree
on, Martirano says the roughly 6,000
students in Fayette County can't wait.
"There is a crisis in that county
that needs to be addressed," said
Martirano. "This, for me, is about
social justice and doing the right
things for kids."

Hazardous Conditions
West Virginia's school board voted
in 2009 to seize control of Fayette
County after auditors repeatedly
found spending and hiring irregularities. The county had fallen on hard
economic times, losing more than
half its revenue in the past decade
after the coal-mining industry collapsed and families left the district
in droves.
But unlike many districts that close
facilities piecemeal and redraw attendance boundaries as enrollment
shrinks, Fayette County's school
board members kept the vast majority of schools open despite the exodus
of students.
Today, clumps of asbestos dangle
from classroom ceilings, floors visibly
sag, and bricks regularly tumble out
of walls at a number of schools in the
county.
Across West Virginia, there are five
schools still heated by coal, an arduous
process that requires maintenance
crews to dump 26 buckets of coal into
a giant furnace twice a day. Three of
those schools are in Fayette County.
At some of the county's schools, no
students passed recent statewide
tests in math, according to administrators. Several of the county's five
high schools offer just a handful of
Advanced Placement courses.
But things have only gotten worse
since the state took over, residents
say.

Since the state stepped in, four superintendents have been appointed
to run the district. "They've done
nothing in the last five years to help
us," Amanda Skaggs, a mother of
three children in the district, said of
the state.
In September last year, Gov. Earl
Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, hired
Martirano, a longtime Maryland
educator who was selected as that
state's 2009 district superintendent
of the year, to become West Virginia's schools chief. Many of the challenges that Martirano is trying to
address in Fayette are playing out
in varying degrees across the state:
steep enrollment losses, budget cuts
to schools, lagging academics, and
decrepit facilities.
In Fayette, prior to Martirano's
current plan to consolidate, local
voters overwhelmingly rejected a
bond that would have shuttered
some schools and built new facilities. Right after, Martirano hired
Terry George, Fayette's fourth
state-appointed superintendent, in
July. Less than three weeks after
being hired, George presented
Fayette County with a consolidation plan backed by Martirano
that would convert almost all of
the district's high schools into K-8
schools and includes a new $56
million high school. George said he
doesn't need the local school board
members' or community members'
approval since the state runs the
district and the plan doesn't require a tax increase.
Still, it has faced some opposition, much of it from residents in
Meadow Bridge, a small town on the
south side of the county.

Parents Divided
Parents there allege in a lawsuit
that the condition of schools has
been grossly exaggerated. "We just
want to be left alone," said Angela
Gilkerson, a teacher and mother
in Meadow Bridge. She and other
parents adamantly oppose the part
of the plan that would require their
children to travel by school bus
for 80 minutes, one-way to get to
school.
But a different group of parents
say if George's plan gets final approval, that it will lead to the state
finally handing back the reins to
local officials and that students will
be placed in safer conditions.
While the plan got the green

14 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 9, 2015 | www.edweek.org

Photos by Doyle Maurer/Education Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

light from the state board of education, it has run into trouble with
the School Building Authority, a
special state entity that governs
how state dollars are spent to build
new schools.
The agency uses a mix of state
sales tax dollars, bonds, and
lottery money to dole out facilities funding to school districts,
though that money has been cut
in half in the last six years because of state budget cutbacks.
This year, the building authority
only has $54 million to give out
and more than $150 million in
requests.
In September, the authority attempted to kill the plan, citing the
lack of community support and $39
million over three years in state
money that the plan calls for, more
than three times the average request.
The authority later reversed that
move after a group of residents
sued. It will take a final vote later
this month on whether or not to
fund the project.
"It's complete and utter frustration," said Shawna Sparks, a mother
of five children in the district who
supports the plan. "I think there's a
lot of politics involved, which is disgusting to me."
West Virginia's school districts
have around $3 billion worth of
capital improvement needs, according to a 2010 assessment,

said David Sneed, the director
of the School Building Authority.
Taxpayers in the state collectively
spend just about $100 million a
year on new facilities. While many
residents say Fayette County is
not being treated fairly, authority
officials point out that they have
previously given the county $75
million to pay for new facilities,
only to be handed back most of the
money after local residents and officials couldn't agree on out how to
spend it.
"That money could've gone to
other districts," Sneed said.

Shrinking Pot
And while the state superintendent and many residents say
the board is rejecting the plan
because it's not supported by a
voter-backed bond, none of the
proposals before the board this
month are attached to bonds,
Sneed said.
Fayette's issues have state officials re-evaluating how they
should distribute a shrinking pot
of money to build new facilities and
how local districts finance projects
as maintenance costs start to eat
into classroom spending.
Sneed says the building authority
is dedicated to helping Fayette.
"If not this time, we'll figure out a
plan authority members feel comfortable with," Sneed said.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP:
Kickball marks are evident in
the coal dust on the
gymnasium wall at Ansted
Elementary in Fayette
County, W.Va. Space heaters,
like the one on the wall, have
replaced a basement coal
furnace in the school.
Asbestos lines the ceiling
above the coal furnace.
Terry George, the
state-appointed school
superintendent in Fayette
County, stands next to the
broken furnace and a coal
bin sprinkled with asbestos
chips. A controversial school
consolidation plan would
shutter some schools and
include a new $56 million
high school.

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Education Week - December 9, 2015

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