By Beth Christian Broschart
The Parsons Advocate
PARSONS – Tucker BOE members had a discussion with local legislators during Monday’s meeting. BOE President Tim Turner said the board wanted to discuss educational legislative items.
“With our declining enrollment, we are trying to maintain our schools and our quality of education in Tucker County,” Turner said. “It becomes more and more difficult as we lose students.”
BOE vice president Janet Preston said the purpose of meeting with legislators before the session is to hear the board’s concerns and keep those in mind during the upcoming legislative session.
“We have a declining enrollment. From last year to this year, we are 1.4 teachers over on our certified list. That’s a problem for us because we are just trying to give the best education we have with the numbers we have,” Preston said. “Next year we will be 3 teachers over the formula.”
Tucker County Superintendent Dr. Eddie Campbell said that will leave the board about $150,000 to come up with to cover those salaries next year.
“Obviously, money is what we want to talk about. We would like to continue to staff our schools at our current teachers. We do not want to cut any teachers. But there are no good answers for us,” Preston said.
Preston said another issue is Step 6 funding which is based on salary and assists with utility bills. It was explained when teachers retire and others are hired, the salary levels drop and so does the funding to assist with fixed costs which do not change based on teacher salary.
“It has a trickling effect,” said Tucker County Financial Director Dave Lambert. “Because so much of the formula is based on enrollment, our funding goes down. But our utilities are not going down – what it costs to maintain facilities is not going down.”
Delegate Danny Wagner, R-Barbour, said an amendment to a bill to help with Step 6A funding, but it did not go through.
“Tucker, Pendleton and Pocahontas counties received a lot of talk about this issue,” Wagner said. “I feel like if everyone under population of 1,400 should get the same funding, but population density comes into play. We were talking earlier. It is very hard to get a bill passed for just one county, but it is needed here. If we could get something where everyone under 1,400 would get the same amount of funding it would be helpful.”
Campbell said it was hard because some of the counties receive 100 percent levy such as Pleasants County. “Doddridge County gets no money from the state, and I don’t want to hurt any other counties,” Campbell said. “We are just looking for solutions to problems for our county and others like it.”
“I think it would be a bill specific to those three counties, Tucker, Pocahontas and Pendleton – and it would almost need to be an amendment to get it passed,” Wagner said.
Preston asked Legislators about the counties having more flexibility on how they spend some of the funds.
“If our schools could have more flexibility on how we spend money, that could help us with some needs,” Preston said.
Tomson asked if the schools system though about asking permission to have some of the money reallocated.
“We have made several attempts to for funds to be reallocated, but more often than not, we are told no. It is in code and we have to use the funds for a certain expense,” Campbell said.
Also during Monday’s meeting, Campbell said he has received the embargoed A-F Accountability System.
“They are embargoed until after the West Virginia State BOE meets Nov. 9 and 10,” Campbell said. “We are going to talk to the board. They have not come up with a plan on how they want to publically want to release the information.”
Campbell said he is looking at the numbers and has many questions that have not yet been answered.
“We are still getting a handle on what we can and cannot do regarding appeals with our scores,” Campbell said. “It’s an arduous task but necessary to go through and make sure our scores are as accurate as they possibly can be.”
BOE members voted to change the date of TCHS graduation from May 25 to May 26.
The next Tucker County BOE meeting is slated for 4:30 p.m. Nov. 7 at Davis Thomas Elementary Middle School.
