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Paden City Fights to Save Homecoming

A new legal filing asks a judge to find Superintendent Cassandra Porter in contempt of court

Author

Danny Glover
August 20, 2024

Scoreboard on the Paden City High School football field

Paden City High School opened the 2024-25 school year as planned on Monday and celebrated after school, but the fight to give students a normal school year isn’t over.

Lawyers representing the Paden City community opened a new front on the first day of school at PCHS by asking a judge to hold Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Cassandra Porter in contempt. The request to Wetzel County Circuit Court Judge Richard Wilson is the result of the school system’s attempt to block other county schools from playing games on the PCHS football field.

“Part of a high school being ‘open’ is the existence of its football team and conducting games against other football teams at its ‘home field,’” the new court filing says. “The defendant’s act of disallowing football games at the PCHS high school football stadium is in direct violation and is in contempt of this court’s order dated July 31.”

The July 31 ruling reopened PCHS 50 days after Porter first announced the closure. Porter has been on a crusade to merge Paden City High School into Magnolia High School for the past year, but Wilson rejected her attempt to merge the two schools because PCHS sits atop a Superfund site.

The new effort to forbid other Wetzel County schools from playing games on Paden City’s football field is an end run around the court, Paden City’s lawyers argue.

“The email sent by Wetzel County Schools forbidding other schools from playing PCHS at the PCHS home football field closes a portion of Paden City High School that was affirmatively ordered to be open by this court,” the legal filing says.

The policy would impact only one game on the PCHS football schedule — the Oct. 11 homecoming against Hundred High School. Seven other high schools, including Valley in Wetzel County, dropped PCHS from their schedules amid summer legal wrangling, but Paden City athletics officials quickly rebuilt a complete new schedule.

Paul Huston II, the secondary education director and county administrator for Wetzel County Schools, told Wetzel County school principals in an Aug. 14 letter that their teams could not play football in Paden City. Huston is a graduate of Hundred. Here is the text of his letter:

If you have scheduled or plan to play MS or HS football games with PCHS they must be played either at your home field or on a neutral site. You are not allowed to play on their field. This is a safety concern. This only applies to football. Volleyball and basketball are ok. We are currently in a legal battle concerning student safety, and the field is sitting on top of ground zero for pollutants. We in good conscience cannot turn a blind eye and allow our students to risk chemical exposure from vapors coming up through the field.

If you are supposed to play at PCHS and the game is moved to your field, please consider giving them some or all of the gate revenue after expenses.

The policy appears to violate at least the spirit of Wilson’s ruling, if not the letter of it. “The court enjoins respondent Cassandra Porter from closing or continuing the closure of Paden City High School,” the judge wrote when he ruled against Porter.

If Wilson finds Porter in contempt for disrupting Paden City’s homecoming game, you can add that to the list of everything she got wrong in this whole ordeal.