Challenge West Virginia

by Lynne White

ATHENS, W.Va. — Lost in the shuffle of education-related bills during the recent legislative session was House Bill 3150. It would have required county school boards to abide by maximum school bus transportation times.

That means 45 minutes each way for middle school students and 60 minutes each way for high school students. Those upper limits are presently only recommendations that are too often ignored. The travesty of unnecessarily long school bus rides in West Virginia has been the subject of excellent reporting in the past, but despite legislative and state Board of Education policy recommendations, without mandates the problem not only persists but promises to get worse.

In Mercer County, plans are proceeding to build a new School Building Authority-funded consolidated middle school on the same campus alongside the West Virginia Turnpike where PikeView High School is located. Four community K-8 schools, spread throughout the less populous areas of Mercer County, are to be reconfigured as K-5 schools. Eleven-to-14-year-olds will be required to join their high school-aged siblings and peers on long bus rides across the county to the consolidated campus.

When the SBA and State Board of Education approved the PikeView Middle School project, it was based on information, affirmed by the Mercer County Superintendent that “[a]t present, most PikeView High students spend less than 30 minutes on the bus each way. For a student living at Flat Top or beyond Herndon Mountain, the ride could take close to 45 minutes. Middle school students would have the same travel time, depending on where they live. Mercer County Transportation Supervisor … estimates that students attending the new PikeView Middle would be on the bus no more than 20 minutes beyond what was required to take them to their K-8 school,” as stated in the Mercer County application for the SBA grant.

In actuality, only 39 percent (not “most”) of PikeView High School students who ride the bus to the consolidated campus today ride for less than 30 minutes one way (based on the updated 2008-2009 transportation data provided by the Mercer County Superintendent of Schools). One out of every 12 PikeView High student bus riders is on the bus longer than the maximum recommended 60 minutes each morning. Thirty-four percent have one-way rides longer than 45 minutes.

By comparison, only 6 percent of children currently going to the community K-8 schools have one-way rides exceeding 45 minutes and only one out of every 100 children has a one-way bus ride longer than an hour. If these children are bused to the consolidated campus for middle school, the number of children whose rides exceed the recommended maximum time on the bus will increase six-fold. While it is true that the average increase in bus time will be about 20 minutes, what Mercer County officials neglected to mention to the SBA and the state Board of Education is that this will make the average one-way bus ride to the new middle school (on clear, dry days) 42 minutes. We are treating the maximum recommendation as if it’s the goal, not the outermost bound of acceptability.

To put it another way, this average 20-minute increase means that the vast majority of children will spend the equivalent of 20 additional instructional days riding the bus every year. For students going to the consolidated PikeView Middle School, we will increase their time away from home by a month of school days but require them to spend it riding a bus, not learning in the classroom.

It would be one thing if this were being done at the request of the affected communities. Instead, three board members from the population centers of Princeton and Bluefield voted against the wishes of the vast majority of parents who responded to surveys, against the heart-felt and research-based objections of most participants in eight public hearings, and against the pleas for consensus-building from the two board members who live in the affected communities.

This consolidation is not being done to provide cost savings in difficult financial circumstances. This plan will add a school without closing any. Additional service personnel will be required. Maintenance costs will increase. Transportation costs will increase. No cutback in professional personnel is planned. Administrative personnel will be added.

The rationale to consolidate the middle schools articulated by Mercer County administrators and supporting board of education members is to improve student achievement and educational opportunities for the children in the small rural schools.

ATHENS, W.Va. — Lost in the shuffle of education-related bills during the recent legislative session was House Bill 3150. It would have required county school boards to abide by maximum school bus transportation times.

That means 45 minutes each way for middle school students and 60 minutes each way for high school students. Those upper limits are presently only recommendations that are too often ignored. The travesty of unnecessarily long school bus rides in West Virginia has been the subject of excellent reporting in the past, but despite legislative and State Board of Education policy recommendations, without mandates the problem not only persists but promises to get worse.

In Mercer County, plans are proceeding to build a new School Building Authority-funded consolidated middle school on the same campus alongside the West Virginia Turnpike where PikeView High School is located. Four community K-8 schools, spread throughout the less populous areas of Mercer County, are to be reconfigured as K-5 schools. Eleven-to-14-year-olds will be required to join their high school-aged siblings and peers on long bus rides across the county to the consolidated campus.

When the SBA and State Board of Education approved the PikeView Middle School project, it was based on information, affirmed by the Mercer County Superintendent that “[a]t present, most PikeView High students spend less than 30 minutes on the bus each way. For a student living at Flat Top or beyond Herndon Mountain, the ride could take close to 45 minutes. Middle school students would have the same travel time, depending on where they live. Mercer County Transportation Supervisor … estimates that students attending the new PikeView Middle would be on the bus no more than 20 minutes beyond what was required to take them to their K-8 school,” as stated in the Mercer County application for the SBA grant.

In actuality, only 39 percent (not “most”) of PikeView High School students who ride the bus to the consolidated campus today ride for less than 30 minutes one way (based on the updated 2008-2009 transportation data provided by the Mercer County Superintendent of Schools). One out of every 12 PikeView High student bus riders is on the bus longer than the maximum recommended 60 minutes each morning. Thirty-four percent have one-way rides longer than 45 minutes.

By comparison, only 6 percent of children currently going to the community K-8 schools have one-way rides exceeding 45 minutes and only one out of every 100 children has a one-way bus ride longer than an hour. If these children are bused to the consolidated campus for middle school, the number of children whose rides exceed the recommended maximum time on the bus will increase six-fold. While it is true that the average increase in bus time will be about 20 minutes, what Mercer County officials neglected to mention to the SBA and the state Board of Education is that this will make the average one-way bus ride to the new middle school (on clear, dry days) 42 minutes. We are treating the maximum recommendation as if it’s the goal, not the outermost bound of acceptability.

To put it another way, this average 20-minute increase means that the vast majority of children will spend the equivalent of 20 additional instructional days riding the bus every year. For students going to the consolidated PikeView Middle School, we will increase their time away from home by a month of school days but require them to spend it riding a bus, not learning in the classroom.

It would be one thing if this were being done at the request of the affected communities. Instead, three board members from the population centers of Princeton and Bluefield voted against the wishes of the vast majority of parents who responded to surveys, against the heart-felt and research-based objections of most participants in eight public hearings, and against the pleas for consensus-building from the two board members who live in the affected communities.

This consolidation is not being done to provide cost savings in difficult financial circumstances. This plan will add a school without closing any. Additional service personnel will be required. Maintenance costs will increase. Transportation costs will increase. No cutback in professional personnel is planned. Administrative personnel will be added.

The rationale to consolidate the middle schools articulated by Mercer County administrators and supporting board of education members is to improve student achievement and educational opportunities for the children in the small rural schools.

Certainly, consolidating middle school programs will ease administrators’ scheduling challenges and facilitate middle school teacher placements, but the available data offer scant evidence that middle-schoolers in rural K-8 schools are lagging behind their peers in the Princeton and Bluefield Middle Schools in either academic achievement or extracurricular participation. In fact, the data show the reverse in many cases.

The desire to improve students’ education is admirable, but the ability of a new consolidated school to achieve that end is uncertain at best. The high price to be paid by children in the form of long bus rides is well understood.

There was much discussion at the Mercer County public hearings regarding the middle school model versus small community K-8 configuration, but nationally, professional educators and researchers focused on middle-grades reform now recommend that reform efforts should be focused on improving existing schools instead of trying to improve students’ education by reconfiguring schools and moving students.

After a review of the available research, the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform issued a policy statement last summer that concluded: “The National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, which supports all bona fide efforts to improve schooling for young adolescents (ages 10-14), recommends that such efforts be grounded in evidence based research. Current research on grade configuration, however, is not definitive. More evidence is needed to document the positive outcomes achieved by 6-8 and K-8 schools on young adolescents, as well as by other organizational structures. The National Forum believes that what is most important for the education of young adolescent learners is what takes place inside each middle-grades school, not grade configuration per se.”

Regarding the PikeView Middle School project, architectural drawings have been made, monies have been approved, plans are moving forward. However, bids have not been awarded and no ground has been broken. It is not too late to put the children first. I will certainly be labeled a rogue board member for speaking out against a majority vote, but I don’t know how I can’t when I know so many children will be impacted by unnecessarily long bus rides. Construction projects are a welcome and important economic stimulus, but let’s target them where they can help stimulate learning in the communities where our children live.

I call upon legislators, the SBA, state Board of Education and the governor to do what many county boards of education don’t seem to have the will to do when enticed by millions of dollars of state funds. It is time to mandate maximum bus rides and fund schools appropriately.

Policy Statement on Grade Configuration:

http://www.mgforum.org/Portals/0/MGFdocs/GradeConfiguration.pdf

White, of Athens, is a member of the Mercer County Board of Education.

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