Challenge West Virginia

By Jessica Farrish
Register-Herald Reporter

When 33-year-old Jaime Gilkerson Scott entered Furman University in South Carolina in 1994, she felt she wasn’t competitive with the other freshmen.

Scott had graduated with a 3.9 GPA from Oak Hill High School, where she’d received a high-quality education, she said.

But she was not prepared for the rigors at Furman.

“There were all these kids that had taken all these advanced placement courses and electives they’d been offered,” she said. “(It) had far exceeded what we’d been able to take at Oak Hill.

“It had nothing to do with the quality of education; it was just access to those sorts of classes.”

Now a principal at a community school in Ohio, Scott said officials and citizens of her home county of Fayette must proceed carefully as they decide whether school consolidation is the best step for the county.

Some Fayette County residents are critical of a decision by the West Virginia State Building Authority to grant $21.8 million to the county and for granting $100,000 to help the Fayette Board of Education plan for a bond call.

The $21.8 million is to help fund a $74 million plan that includes construction of a new Fayette Plateau high school that would consolidate Oak Hill, Fayetteville, Mount Hope and Midland Trail high schools.

The $21.8 million grant is contingent upon passage of a bond to supply the remainder of the $74 million.

Scott said she thinks consolidation would provide more AP courses and a better academic program for students.

But at what cost?

“One thing that is definitely a negative (with consolidation) is that it decreases the amount of participation in a lot of sports and makes them more competitive,” she said. “Some students may not have access to that as they do in the smaller schools, but academically, I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

Transportation time for students should be a consideration, according to Scott.

Scott’s mother, Charlotte Gilkerson, 61, of Oak Hill, said she understands the financial challenges of the school board and is not against consolidation as a principle.

“However, I am a proponent of community schools,” she said. “I think when you remove the schools and churches and post offices from the community, we take away the heart of the community and that community slowly dies and becomes a ghost town.”

Gilkerson urged parents to learn everything about consolidation and community schools so they can make an informed decision on whether to support the consolidation.

“Regardless of which route we take, we should have the child’s educational pursuits as the forerunner of our concerns,” she said.

Peggy Farmer, a resident of the Oak Hill area and former Fayette school board member, said she was shocked to discover SBA had granted $100,000 for officials to fund the planning of the bond.

“What if every county in West Virginia would say, ‘Give us $100,000 to help us put a bond call out?’” Farmer stated.

“I think this was a fast-acting plan to satisfy the state Board of Education so they would not come in and take our school system over,” Farmer said. “It’s true that we do need better educational plans, we do need to implement better educational policies, but I don’t think building a big school is going to cure our problems.”

In March 2007, the state Board of Education ordered Fayette County schools to make a plethora of changes or be taken over by the state.

The county is not on probation at this time.

Farmer said she’s concerned that the interests of average students are being overlooked in the consolidation process.

“All students are not going to college,” she said. “If you raise the standards so high, (less academic students) are going to get frustrated and drop out, and that’s going to be more people added to the welfare system.”

Fayette BOE member Jock Workman said the board has already developed a committee to improve retention rates of students.

Part of the $74 million package is to increase the courses offered at the Fayette Plateau Vocational-Technical Center, which trains students in vocational and technical trades and was recently ranked as the top vo-tech center in the region, Workman said.

Critics of the new system have said that a new plan by Fayette BOE to abolish block scheduling will have a detrimental impact on the education of vo-tech students.

Dr. Sylvia Allen, a retired high school and elementary school principal in the Fayette school system, said she passionately believes the consolidation is in the best interests of students.

“I’ve been grieving for years over the inequity of curriculum that’s available to our high school students,” she said.

Allen, who has helped train teachers in Kanawha, Raleigh and other counties, said she believes the only way to introduce a better curriculum is by consolidation.

“I believe that if we turn our schools around here, we’re going to be swamped with new businesses,” she added.

Workman said he’s hopeful the bond will be passed by Fayette voters next fall.

“I don’t want to be oppositional,” he said. “We have done our part.

“It is now up to the citizens of Fayette County to do their part if they want a future for their kids.”

Some critics of consolidation have expressed concern that school athletic teams will be affected.

“We’ve got four or five professional athletes in the state,” Workman said. “That means most of them are going to have to make their living using their heads.”

Fayette Schools Superintendent Chris Perkins had said earlier that the $74 million would also be used to upgrade and modernize existing facilities throughout the county and provide more academic classes for students.

— E-mail: jfarrish@register-herald.com

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