Wetzel County Defends School Consolidation Plans

This is the first in a series of articles about school consolidation in Wetzel County.

Wetzel County Schools last week moved another step closer to consolidating its four high schools into two when it released impact statements about the planned consolidations and announced the dates of planned public hearings.

The school system posted two impact statements to its website on Thursday. One statement defends the plan to merge the student body of Paden City High School into the existing buildings of Magnolia High School (PCHS grades 9-12) and New Martinsville School (PCHS grades 7-8). The other statement defends the plan to send Hundred High School students on long, windy bus rides to Valley High School’s building in Pine Grove.

The names, mascots and colors of Magnolia and Valley would change if the five-member Wetzel County Board of Education approves the plan.

State policy requires that the impact statements be posted for 30 days before public hearings begin. Then Wetzel County Schools must hold hearings at all five affected schools. That is scheduled to happen in the two weeks before Thanksgiving.

One round of hearings will focus on the closure of PCHS. The first hearing will be Nov. 13 at Magnolia, followed by hearings at New Martinsville School on Nov. 14 and PCHS on Nov. 15. The alternate dates are Nov. 14-16 in the same school order.

The hearings for the Hundred-Valley merger are scheduled for Nov. 18 at Hundred and Nov. 20 at Valley, with alternate dates of Nov. 19 and Nov. 21.

The times for all of the original hearings will be at 6 p.m. If the hearings have to be held on any of the alternate dates, they will be at 9 a.m. at PCHS, Magnolia and New Martinsville School, and at 6 p.m. at Hundred and Valley.

The county board is expected to vote on both mergers at a 9 a.m. meeting on Nov. 22 (or Nov. 25 as an alternate date).

The governing policy for this type of consolidation requires that:

• The superintendent and a quorum of the school board attend each hearing;

• Members of the public be able to attend the hearings, submit statements and testimony, and question county school officials;

• The hearings be held in a facility large enough to accommodate everyone who wants to attend or be moved to a new location if the chosen facilities prove to be too small; and

• The hearings last “a reasonable amount of time” between 9 a.m. and 11 p.m., carrying over into multiple days if necessary.

Written statements must be submitted by 12 p.m. on Nov. 7 for the PCHS-Magnolia merger and Nov. 11 for the Hundred-Valley merger. Oral statements at the hearings may be limited to no more than 3 minutes each.

The impact statements and hearings are key elements of the consolidation process. The county must follow rules that are spelled out in state law and two related policies on school consolidation and school facilities.

“When the board votes ... they have to give the impact statement substantial weight in making their decision,” attorney Richard Boothby told the school board at an August 2023 work session.

At that meeting, he also gave Superintendent Cassandra Porter and board members a packet with relevant statutes and policies, a checklist to follow, and legal cases about consolidation. This publication obtained the documents through the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act. They are provided as a PDF at the bottom of this article.

Wetzel County’s 2020-2029 Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan did not call for the closure or consolidation of any schools, so if the board votes to create two new high schools from four, the county will have to ask the state Department of Education to amend the CEFP.

“You actually can modify the CEFP anytime to make forecasts,” Boothby said. “But when you say ‘We are going to close this building,’ all the stuff in [the packet he provided] has to happen first.”

Wetzel County Schools kicked off the consolidation process at a 10-minute special session on Sept. 6, a week after a chaotic brainstorming about how best to consolidate schools. The board is scheduled to hold another special session at 9 a.m. this morning to vote on the impact statements.