A Strange Path to Consolidation

As the Wetzel County Board of Education met last Friday, Vice President Brian Castilow unwittingly captured the essence of the conversation with a passing observation near the end: “This has been a strange meeting.”

Indeed, it was. The board’s nonvoting work sessions sometimes meander, but the Aug. 30 meeting was particularly erratic. It was part gripefest about the harsh realities of public education, part data dump about the changing nature of Wetzel County, and part spontaneous brainstorm about school consolidation. By the end, the board members, school superintendent, administrative staff, and several principals had politicked their way to a two-phase plan of consolidation best described as chaos by design. 

First, the county would reconfigure four existing high schools into two renamed schools and merge grades 7-8 from one of those schools into an elementary school. The two remaining high schools would get new names, mascots, school colors and missions.

Next, the county would shop for land to buy and build either one or two centrally located campuses. These would be the future educational homes for all students from pre-kindergarten through 12^th grade and possibly the Wetzel County Technical Education Center. If the county opts for two new campuses, the recently consolidated high schools could keep their new identities. If everyone goes to one location, the county would have to repeat the consolidation process just a few years after disrupting people’s lives and upending communities.

Like Castilow said, it was a strange meeting.

More mischief in the making?
Strange isn’t unusual in Wetzel County these days. The school board and new superintendent have put some of their students, teachers, athletes and coaches through the wringer ever since the board raised the issue of consolidation in July 2023.

The discussion back then went much like the one last week, as board members kicked around several ideas for consolidation. The two most popular were to reconfigure Magnolia, Paden City and Valley high schools into one new facility and renovate Hundred High School, or to consolidate all four high schools into two new facilities.

Rather than accept the board’s direction, newly hired Superintendent Cassandra Porter went her own way. She pushed to merge PCHS into Magnolia, a proposal that reopened the wounds of a defeated plan to do the same thing back in 2010. In the following weeks, one board member resigned after alleged threats, and his replacement from Paden City challenged Porter’s plan. The board ultimately defeated that plan 5-0 last September.

Longstanding environmental pollution in Paden City resurfaced about that time. Porter seized it as an opportunity to force the merger of PCHS and Magnolia on July 1, 2024, but parents, grandparents and guardians of PCHS students sued. Porter did not have the power to act unilaterally that she presumed. A Wetzel County judge reopened PCHS on July 31 and ordered Porter not to try to close it again.

The mischief has not stopped, though. Last month, another school official tried an end run around the judge by canceling Paden City’s homecoming football game against Hundred. (He reversed course after the move led to a contempt allegation against Porter.) Then Wetzel County Schools censored the Paden City community on Facebook.

Last week’s strange board meeting occurred amid that backdrop.

Snapshots of Wetzel County
The work session started with a discussion about a consolidation survey of Wetzel County residents. People took the survey between June 18 (a week after Porter announced the illegal merger of PCHS into Magnolia) and July 19.

More than 900 people responded, a rate that is on par with voter turnout for a typical ballot measure to fund public schools. The breakdown of responses was in line with the county’s school populations. Forty-one percent of respondents had ties to Magnolia, 26 percent to Paden City, 20 percent to Valley, and 13 percent to Hundred.

The overall opinions about school consolidation were predictable. The schools with the smaller student bodies (Paden City and Hundred) do not want to be relocated; the larger schools that would stay put (Magnolia and Valley) are more open to change.

Despite that split, the pro-consolidation tone of the board meeting was evident early. Treasurer Jeffrey Lancaster even viewed the negative results from Paden City as a surprising positive. He said only half of Paden City survey takers used the words upset, sad or resistant to describe their feelings about getting a new high school.

“I’m a Tyler County High School Red Raider. My school was consolidated,” Lancaster said. “My kids attend a consolidated school; they’ve benefited from it tremendously.”

Christine Mitchell, the newest board member, said one data point in the survey gives her pause when it comes to consolidation — the 358 square miles of Wetzel County’s borders. “How [consolidation] is done is the big question,” she said. “We have to remember that there are four corners to the county. … That’s why Hundred’s results are so negative.” But she said “it’s obvious we need to make a move ... toward some type of consolidation.”

Board member Jimmy Glasscock has been a vocal opponent of consolidation in large part because of Wetzel County’s geographical size. But even his position softened as he viewed the data. “I will say you’ve opened my eyes a little bit,” Glasscock said, adding that he would consider two centrally located campuses in the county.

‘Crisis mode’
A consensus for some form of consolidation built as principals from several Wetzel County schools described the challenges they face. They have trouble hiring and retaining teachers, keeping classrooms fully staffed, and offering not only diverse electives but also core classes.

The new principals of the two schools in Paden City were noticeably absent. “Everyone was invited, and no one was forced,” Porter said. The fact that some principals could not break away to share their perspectives speaks volumes about the demands of their jobs, she added. The principals who were there said their teachers are just as hard-pressed.

Here are some of the anecdotes from principals and county staff:

• Valley cannot find a certified teacher for English classes. The job has been posted consistently since February.

• Paden City cannot find high school math teachers, so a teacher travels from Magnolia to teach Applied Statistics, Financial Algebra and Trigonometry.

• The lone math teacher at Hundred has to teach every class in that topic.

• Magnolia’s new Spanish teacher handles classes for every county high school — in person at Magnolia and virtually at the other three.

• A teacher who had to prep for five different classes at Valley moved to Tyler Consolidated because it means prepping for only one topic and teaching it to multiple classes.

• Substitute teachers cover about 20 classrooms a day across Wetzel County.

Wetzel County Schools is increasingly using a service called Proxlearn to cover open classes. Certified teachers from the company instruct students via livestream while aides monitor the rooms. School officials say Proxlearn is better than state-run virtual classes but still not ideal. “We are in crisis mode right now for that to happen,” Porter complained two weeks ago.

New names, colors, mascots and missions
Many of the problems in Wetzel County are common in public education these days. Board members briefly acknowledged as much but also constantly repeated platitudes like “for the children” and “we’ve got to do something” to rationalize the half-baked consolidation plan they concocted.

Glasscock said he will not support any plan that involves one school for the whole county. “That’s not going to happen with my vote,” he said. “That is wrong.” Mitchell agreed and then suggested a consolidation into two high schools next year. “We need to consolidate Valley and Hundred somewhere, and Magnolia and Paden City somewhere.”

As the idea percolated, board members adopted veiled language for the two new schools — the “riverfront school” for Magnolia and Paden City students, and the “countryside school” for Valley and Hundred students. Forsaking all four existing school names, as well as the team colors and mascots, would show that their educational missions are changing.

That is a key distinction because of state policy for consolidations of this type. A new school can be created more quickly from existing schools by terminating the current missions and creating a new one for a new student body. The policy specifically says “a school is defined by its population and educational mission, not just the physical facility.”

The open question is whether creating two new schools within existing facilities would be temporary. Board members seem inclined to buy land eventually and build one or two new campuses, but as described by Porter, the agenda item for the next board meeting will be limited to these elements:

• Merging grades 7-8 in Paden City High School with New Martinsville School.

• Consolidating grades 9-12 in Paden City and Magnolia into a newly named school with new colors, a new mascot and a new mission.

• And consolidating Hundred and Valley in like fashion.

When board members pondered the creation of two new schools in new locations last year, Porter ignored them. She remained noncommittal at the nonvoting work session last week. “I don’t even think we need to go that far,” she said. “I think we can hash that out in more work sessions as we go and as we continue to look for land options.”

Porter did agree to Glasscock’s request that she visit all four high schools before the next board meeting to explain the short-term plan to the principals. But based on the lack of transparency in recent Wetzel County Schools history, what Porter and the board do after that is anyone’s guess.