Meeting Summary

I went to this meeting tonight and here is a summary as I remember it.  I will be posting video shortly.

1.    The Interim superintendent apologized re: the short announcement.

2.  He explained that the board has until Oct 1 to submit its proposal.  It was fairly obvious that they had not really considered the proposal with any depth.  He explained that the former superintendent did not want to deal with the issue.  The Thursday night is very near.

3.  There was a lot of people at the Music Room.   Many staff and professionals from all over the county were there..  Some parents were there as well.  5:00 for the meeting didn't give a lot of opportunity for working parents to attend.

4.    Maintenance supervisor, Ron Hall of the board office gave a run-down on the conditions of the building.  He complained that he didn't have enough money to keep these buildings up.  It did appear to this reporter that money for maintenance has not been much of a priority in the past years.  In other words,  all the buildings have been neglected, some pretty severely.  The proposed reconfig would make it possible to build new facilities instead of fixing up the old as much.  The SBA doesn't like to maintain buildings;  they have two goals in mind,  "less buildings" and "new buildings."  Of course,  Pocahontas County has been upgrading its facilities for several years.  So they won't really satisfy the SBA unless they shuffle the children around some and build some new facilities.

5.  The estimated cost of the config is 28 million dollars with perhaps as much as 18 million coming from the SBA.  It was not adequately explained to me as to where that money would come from locally.  Someone mentioned the dirty word, "levy."  And it seemed that there was considerable sentiment among the group to call for a levy.  The main caution was that a levy should not involve athletics as the last one did and was trounced royally.

6.  But it was not adequately explained how the new facilities would be any better maintained than the old ones considering that the school system is "too poor" to afford maintenance on the current buildings.

7.  That brought up the question of Marlinton Elementary School which lies in the floodplain.  That of course, is a given.  Not only is MES in the floodplain but the county has just built a brand new facility, the Wellness Center, in the same floodplain.  The sub proposal consists of moving the board office which is high above the floodplain down into MES where all the student records would be subject to flooding.  (Many people can remember 85 when water was nearly to the ceiling of the MES building.

8.  Then another inconsistency arose in the matter:  what about the fact that the school system has recently relocated the 5th grade from MMS to MES.  In other words,  it was no problem expanding the school in the floodplain until now.  Now the main priority is to get the whole bunch out of the floodplain!  Nobody touched an explanation of this corundum.

9.  Then the big secret of the night came out.  We admire Mr. Beam for being the first to articulate this secret in a public meeting.  It weighs heavily into the equation.  The Pocahontas County school system has been constantly funded for several years at the rate of 1400 students when in reality they have had far less.  Question:  Where has all that money been going?-- Certainly, not into maintenance by board testimony.  

10.  The actual configuration is up in the air and the proposal deadline is on Thursday.  It appears that this was the reason for the rush meeting to get public input.  If they don't apply this year,  they will have to wait another year.

11.  The meeting ended on a positive note with no decision as to what to do.  Sometimes indecisiveness is a virtue.  If that is true,  we have a lot of it!!!  All in all there was a good spirit about the meeting perhaps because only a couple board members showed up to listen to the forum.  The others will have to listen to the Commentators video.