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It Takes A Town
The people of Paden City know what's best for the kids of Paden City
Danny Glover
November 26, 2024
I briefly considered driving back to West Virginia for the Nov. 15 public hearing that Wetzel County Schools held about closing my alma mater, Paden City High School. I decided against it because I don’t live there or pay taxes there, and my wife and I didn’t even send our children to public schools.
As they say in my line of work, those optics are bad. I didn’t want to undermine the goal of my friends who are trying to save the school. But if I had gone to the hearing, this is the speech I would have delivered.
A prominent politician once said “It takes a village to raise a child.” I’ll leave that debate to the pundits and historians, but I know this much: It takes a town to educate a child.
In Wetzel County, it takes this town to educate the children of Paden City.
It doesn’t take a board of education based in the county seat up the river.
It doesn’t take a superintendent who lives even farther up the river.
It doesn’t take a local columnist who is a proud alumnus of Magnolia High School.
It doesn’t take a newspaper talking down to this town from the Ivory Tower of the Ohio Valley.
It takes this town!
The principals. The teachers. The coaches. The parents. The grandparents. The neighbors. The business owners.
They know what’s best for the kids of this town!
They know because they live here. They work here. They play here. They thrive here.
I don’t say that to disparage anyone. I’m sure you sincerely think your consolidation plan is best for the kids of Paden City High School. But you don’t know the Wildcats like the people of this town do.
There is a reason state policymakers required you to be here tonight. They expect you not only to hear what this town has to say but also to answer their questions.
So far, you have refused to do that. You don’t take their phone calls. You don’t answer their emails or texts. You blocked them from Facebook and deleted their comments, in violation of the First Amendment, just because they are from this town.
Rather than give them the budgetary information they deserved as taxpayers of this county, you kept it to yourselves until the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act forced you to disclose it.
Then when one of your own board members asked you to share those details in a public meeting, you referred him to Facebook!
Any objective observer could see why this town doesn’t trust this school board and this superintendent with the educational future of their children.
You presume to know what’s best for the kids. But you ignore and silence the people who have raised and educated the kids in this town for generations.
Listen to them.
Don’t listen to me. I haven’t lived here in almost 40 years. I’m not a taxpayer of Wetzel County. My wife and I homeschooled our children. We don’t know what’s best for the kids of Paden City.
But this town does. Listen to them!
Thank you for your time tonight.