Inside the Illegal Closure of PCHS

Wetzel County Schools superintendent Cassandra Porter coordinated last summer’s illegal closure of Paden City High School with state education officials, according to emails obtained through the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

The emails further show that Porter, one of the lead attorneys on her legal team and state school officials were shocked when a judge ruled against them. Now Porter is working with the state again on a broader plan of consolidation set for a vote on Dec. 11.

The emails provide a snapshot of the interactions between state and county officials, and collectively, they suggest that the unelected West Virginia Board of Education has been indirectly involved in determining the future of PCHS for more than a year.

‘The more I hear, the more it worries me’
The coordination between Porter and state officials started Aug. 24, 2023, 10 days after she proposed merging PCHS into Magnolia High School and New Martinsville School in New Martinsville. She had been Wetzel County’s superintendent for less than two months.

Although she was already trying to close PCHS by way of merger, Porter started laying the groundwork for Plan B — closing the school because it sits atop a Superfund site. She first raised the issue with Micah Whitlow, the state director of school facilities.

“At what point do we need to think about moving the children?” Porter asked Whitlow. “Yes, this is bad timing for many reasons. Just looking for some guidance or someone who may be able to help with this question.”

Whitlow asked for more information and said, “The more I hear, the more it worries me.” Porter then forwarded a March 18, 2022, press release from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about Paden City being added to the Superfund list of contaminated groundwater sites.

“I brought Superintendent [Michelle] Blatt up to speed with this issue, and we were wondering if any agency has performed testing inside Paden City HS, or if agencies have communicated anything specific to the Wetzel County Schools?” Whitlow responded.

Porter said both the EPA and West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources had tested the water inside PCHS but added, “We have never received any reports on this.” She subsequently shared a West Virginia MetroNews article about the testing.

On Aug. 28, Whitlow told Porter the West Virginia Department of Environmental Quality was keeping tabs on the developments at PCHS as well. “They said the issue is contained to the water and not an air quality issue, so being in the school isn’t a concern,” Whitlow said. He also shared that information with Blatt.

An orchestrated school closure
Discussions may have continued offline, but the emails between Porter and Whitlow stopped until March 28, 2024, about a month after Wetzel County Schools extended Porter’s contract for three years. That is when Whitlow asked Porter to meet with him and Jeffrey Kelley, the state’s assistant superintendent of accountability programs.

The three appear to have met March 29 to discuss environmental concerns about PCHS. Then on April 2, a day after a reminder from Porter to Whitlow, Blatt sent a list of 10 questions that the state board wanted Wetzel County Schools to answer. The state formally joined the debate about the future of PCHS at that point.

The Wetzel County Board of Education discussed the state board’s questions at a nonvoting work session on April 3. Porter eagerly updated Whitlow in an email at 10:32 p.m. that night.

“This definitely got the board's attention,” she wrote. “Can I request that you come up to Wetzel County to meet with me, two board members, and several of my directors to provide direction/advice on our plan going forward?” That meeting occurred April 11, and over the next few weeks Porter and Whitlow traded emails about a draft “Superfund response plan.”

One draft suggests that at least some Wetzel County Schools officials wanted to mitigate environmental concerns at PCHS without abruptly closing the school or moving faculty and students to buildings out of town. But an April 19 letter from Whitlow to Porter outlined a more aggressive response.

Whitlow said the local school board should not decide when to stop testing the air and water at PCHS and should empower county staff to “act IMMEDIATELY to protect the students and faculty.” A proactive response was necessary to avoid an emergency situation, he added. Whitlow ruled out the idea of moving students to the former Paden City Middle School, church buildings in Paden City or the Wetzel County board office.

“Given the length of time this Superfund designation has been in place, the apparent lack of urgency, and the lack of realistic steps taken to ensure the safety and well-being of students and staff,” he said, “serious consideration should be given to moving forward with closing the facility until the final EPA report is completed in the spring of 2025.”

He requested a final plan by May 6. Five days before the deadline, Porter complained that the EPA last conducted testing at PCHS in February and she still hadn’t seen the results. “This is proven [sic] very stressful when trying to get answers and information,” she wrote. But by May 8, she had decided to close PCHS for the 2024-2025 school year.

The meaning of ‘temporary’
At Porter’s request, Whitlow sent her a presentation titled “Facility Emergencies and Managing Risks” so she could “get my ducks in a row.” He also referred Porter to the temporary closure of Duval Elementary and Middle School in 2021.

In that case, both the local and state school boards approved a change to Lincoln County’s facilities plan to move Duval students temporarily. “That would probably be the route to go” in Wetzel County, too, Whitlow said.

But that never happened. Instead, Porter decided to test the limits of a broadly worded statute giving county superintendents the power to close schools in emergency situations. On June 11, she abruptly announced that PCHS would close as of July 1.

Porter’s letter to PCHS faculty and staff described the decision as “the temporary closure of PCHS,” but according to emails obtained via FOIA, the state wanted no such limitations. Even a permanent closure sounded like a possibility. “Please keep in mind that the emergency procedures still require the full closure process at some point after moving the students,” Whitlow said in a June 3 email.

Assistant state superintendent Kelley reiterated the open-ended nature of the closure after he was sent the minutes of the June 11 Wetzel County school board meeting. “For your records,” he said, “[you] may want to note that the minutes reflect that the students are relocated until further notice. There was mention yesterday that some (incorrectly) thought it was for one year.”

The sudden closure of PCHS triggered multiple emails to state school officials. Their underlying support of the decision was obvious in how they responded to the emails.

State officials promptly archived, without response, the emails from people in Paden City who questioned Porter’s authority or asked the state to intervene. But Kelley personally called two New Martinsville residents who advocated consolidation as long overdue, defended Porter for the courage to pursue it, and accused people from Paden City of verbally assaulting, harassing and threatening her at a June 25 board meeting.

Kelley shared the details of that call with colleagues and later asked someone to call those folks again after they warned about a “public lynch mob” targeting Porter.

Blind spots in the education community
The day before the June 25 hearing, the EPA released the results of the groundwater and air quality tests it conducted at PCHS in February. Porter eagerly reported them to Whitlow. “You really have to read the results. ... There are clearly some problems,” she wrote on June 25.

But her pessimistic response did not reflect what EPA community involvement coordinator John Brakeall actually told her. “The results of the analysis indicate that [volatile organic compounds] from the former Band Box Cleaners drycleaning facility have not caused a vapor intrusion concern for Paden City High School,” Brakeall wrote on June 24.

Porter’s refusal to listen to the EPA’s experts contributed to her legal defeat once the PCHS community sued her. Whitlow had a similar blind spot.

He took scientific comfort in language on the EPA’s Paden City Superfund page but ignored what the agency directly said about the minimal risk to people inside the high school. “I thought it was interesting that the EPA’s website says, ‘It has not yet generated information sufficiently reliable to evaluate whether there are currently any unacceptable human exposure pathways at the site,’” Whitlow wrote to Porter on July 2.

Those dismissive attitudes may help explain the stunned responses to Wetzel County Circuit Judge Richard Wilson’s temporary restraining order, which blocked the closure of PCHS. “[Bowles Rice attorney Rick Boothby] said this is unprecedented,” Porter explained to Wetzel County school board members in a July 12 email. “Rick and his staff are working on a response. I'll keep you posted.”

Alexandra Criner, director of the state education department’s Office of Accountability, answered with one word when Kelley told her the news: “Wow!”

Next up, coordinated consolidation
The PCHS community won their lawsuit on July 31, and the high school reopened for another school year on Aug. 19. But now both PCHS and Hundred High School are set to close next year as part of a consolidation plan approved on 4-1 and 3-2 votes Nov. 22.

Porter and the state appear to be coordinating this move like they did the illegal closure of PCHS. Within days of the Wetzel County board weighing various consolidation options, Porter contacted Whitlow to get his input on the timing of a coming plan.

“I am hoping you will also help me navigate this and let me know what to do next,” Porter wrote Sept. 3. “I know we will have a stict [sic] timeline to follow, documents to compile, and a [comprehensive educational facilities plan] to modify.”

Whitlow gave her a “practical deadline” of Dec. 11 for the state board to vote on any further school closures to take effect in West Virginia for the 2025-26 school year. “The timeline is the critical component right now,” he said. “... If the county prioritized completing the impact statement book(s) ASAP, it would still be achievable.”

County officials finalized the impact statements in mid-October, held hearings at five schools in mid-November and are preparing all the required information for the state board. Based on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering between them and state education officials over the past 15 months, consolidation opponents seem unlikely to find friendly ears in Charleston when the state board votes next week on closing PCHS and Hundred.

Editor’s note: Some of the documents that the West Virginia Department of Education provided in response to a FOIA request are attached below as reference material for information shared in this article.