The original MPO document (above and below) depicts only the proposed “Falling Run Corridor” connecting downtown Morgantown to WV 705 near the Mileground. Everything else in color is not included in the original MPO document and was subsequently added, based on information gathered from various other documents from a variety of organizations.
Kenna Elementary in Kenna, Jackson County, is threatened with being relocated into an industrial park in violation of WV BOE Policy 6200. Will the WV School Building Authority fund this violation too, health and safety of the students be damned? (Update: the SBA did indeed award funding in June 2011.)
KENNA ELEMENTARY POWER POINT (Full Slide Presentation)
Some of the slides: Read the rest of this entry »
See newest designs in his Woodburn Presentation:
See previous details at his blog for a new school on the Woodburn school grounds:
This small version of Terrace Elementary would best fit the needs of the school district, the area, and the site.
As with the larger version of Terrace Elementary, Terrace Small would rise no more than two stories above ground, due to the slope of the land.
This would be a 300 to 350 student capacity school. 32,000 square feet in the first two stories (blue) and an additional 8,000 feet in the third story (gray). The entire school, K or pre-K through 5th grade could fit in the blue and gray.
For Terrace Small, extensive grading would raise the first floor nearly the equivalent of one story above the current playground level (the ground would slope down to meet the bulk of the current playground), thus restoring some of the original level of the playground area. Given this re-grading, the third (top) floor of the new building would then be at the level of the basement of the original building (orange).
The original building could be turned over to community use or mixed school and community use. And/or, the original building could house an exceptional double library on the first floor and an exceptional double computer lab on the second floor.
The design of Terrace Small, which provides more playground space below (southeast) of the building and more space for buses and cars and parking, could be incorporated into the design of the large Terrace Elementary by simply adding a fourth flour above the third floor, or by extending the third floor above the second floor, and by maximizing use of the original building strictly for school use during school hours. These are the significant main advantages to grading out and up the land to place the building almost entirely on the side hill, maximizing use of the open space, and gaining further setback from Richwood Avenue.
Incorporated is Jared Gorby’s idea of preserving some sledding space. This relocates the lunch room next to the gym, as in Brookhaven Elementary. A solarium (yellow) is added to the lunch room, along with a companion solarium on the other side of the bus pick-up entrance.
A couple classrooms could be located above the lunch room, even if the lunch room ceiling is raised above normal room height. The classrooms would top out at the level of the gym height.
A large solarium and commons is situated by the gym. This solarium contains the broad winding terrace stairs and platforms.
Two other solaria are located near the car pick-up entrance. These would be admin/support spaces, stairs, or commons.
Using the side hill is key. It’s a great place and space for a building. And it saves the children from the damages and the dangers of the 705/Mileground commuter/commercial pollution and congestion, among other harms and risks. Read the rest of this entry »
See the early Sheetz gas station planning below. Sheetz has been eager to buy land by the school on the Mileground. Sheetz would like a new traffic signal on the Mileground by its gas station as indicated below. And Sheetz would like a school drive to go immediately beside a station as also indicated below. Sheetz could start with the six pumps as indicated below, then expand to fill the entire armory site.
Mon Schools does not own or control access/egress directly off the roundabout, so Sheetz could buy whatever is left of the R.E. Michaels property to put in a drive to its gas station off the “school” roundabout spoke, thus mixing ever more gas station traffic directly with school bus and car traffic, and allowing Sheetz to build a monster gas station off that major commuter and commercial intersection.
That’s what happens when you build in unstable, high traffic, commuter and commercial sites: uncontrollable major development. This not unlikely possibility is yet another damning way in which the school site is grossly negligent: the future development of the site surrounds are likely to be intense in ways that are neither healthy nor safe for school children. Even the multiple highway and intersection expansions, long since prioritized, may not be the least of it. Sites with surrounds that cannot be known are grossly negligent. Sites with surrounds that are unsafe and unhealthy in ways that are both projected and expected to dramatically worsen are even more unconscionable. So it is with Mon Schools and its rash and wild, wrongful actions.
See the FOIA release emails below.
Read the rest of this entry »If Sheetz puts in the gas station by the school that it has wanted to put in for months, the children of Eastwood Elementary would be exposed to additional toxic vehicle exhaust pollution and likely other fumes from the station. Children and gas should not mix.
Gas Stations Are Toxic Neighbors
by Tim Wall
Anyone who has ever pumped their own gas downwind of the tank knows the tell-tale smell of fuel. But even from a distance those fumes linger. Researchers in Spain found that gas fumes contaminate the air up to 100 meters, or 328 feet, away with potential health hazards.
The airborne chemicals came mostly from unburned fuel evaporating during refilling of the stations’ storage tanks, during automobile refueling, and from spillage. The researchers from the University of Murcia measured the levels of two common gasoline related pollutants, benzene and hexane, in the area around the stations. They then compared these levels to the contamination caused by normal automobile traffic, and found higher levels in areas around gas stations.
CNN:
Four Dead in West Virginia Gas Station Blast
January 30, 2007
At least four people were killed and at least two critically injured Tuesday when an explosion leveled a gas station in this southern West Virginia city, officials said. Among the dead are a firefighter and a paramedic, state fire marshal spokeswoman Celeste Hinzman said. The volunteer fire department was at the Flat Top Little General Store to evacuate people after a report of a leak in a 750- to 1,000-gallon propane tank, Raleigh County Sheriff Danny Moore said. One ambulance that was on the scene to help with the evacuation “disintegrated,” he said.
Wisconsin Department of Health Services:
Health Consultation: Kiddie Kampus Daycare Center – Gasoline Vapor Intrusion
September 22, 2008
During the week of July 21, 2008, staff noticed the appearance of strong gasoline odors in the daycare center. In response, they contacted the Wisconsin Department of Children and Family Services, which subsequently contacted WCHD and DPH. On August 13, 2008, staff from WCHD and DPH visited and evaluated the daycare center for gasoline vapors (WCHD 8/13/2008). The director of the daycare center reported that gasolinelike odors first appeared in the building during the week of July 21, 2008, with odors noticed inside of the daycare center art storage room, which is in the rear of the daycare center. The owner of the convenience/gasoline station store said the appearance of this odor in the daycare center resulted in the discovery of a gasoline leak and there was a subsequent removal of a reported 20 gallons of gasoline from a containment crock located beneath the pump island, which is approximately 50 feet south of the convenience/gasoline station store. At this time it is unclear how vapors migrated into indoor air of the building from a gasoline product release beneath the pump island.
FAMILIES AGAINST CANCER & TOXICS
AUGUST 21, 2004
Fuel Stations May Pose Child Cancer Risk
UK: August 20, 2004
LONDON – Living near a fuel station may quadruple the risk of acute
leukemia in children, research published yesterday showed.
French scientists who carried out a study of more than 500 infants found
that a child whose home was near a fuel station or vehicle-repair garage
was four times as likely to develop leukemia as a child whose home was
further away.
And the longer a child had lived nearby, the higher the risk of leukemia
seemed to be, showed the research, published in the Occupational and
Environmental Medicine journal.
WBOY:
Fire Breaks Out at Morgantown Gas Station [On Mileground] Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of this entry »Three gas stations on the Mileground aren’t enough. Sheetz wants to make it four, and Sheetz wants to locate its gas station on the Eastwood school site border.
Siting a school along an unstable and rapidly developing commuter and commercial strip and intersection is negligent many times over, and in multiple ways. And yet Mon Schools continues to ram through its highly unpopular and grossly irresponsible decision to build a consolidated pre-K thru 5th grade school in this outrageous vortex.
How about gas fumes and more congestion and more vehicle exhaust pollution and more traffic noise from the gas station that Sheetz wants to build on the armory site when it soon comes up for sale?
What moves in next? An asbestos plant?
Already the voluminous dangers and liabilities are a scandal: high traffic, congested traffic, the impending crowding roundabout intersection, vehicle exhaust pollution, traffic noise pollution, undermining, sewage, the stupendous cost of the land and its remediation, and now a likely gas station. Not to mention the preposterous and secretive siting process.
So much for a nice quiet couple of schools, one in the country and one in a stable residential area. Mon Schools could easily build two such schools to replace Easton Elementary and Woodburn Elementary for the $21 to $25 million dollars it intends to spend to hideously site and build Eastwood Consolidated in asinine defiance of broad community will.
A Sheetz representative met with Mon Schools Superintendent Frank Devono as far back as March 2010 about siting a Sheetz gas station by the school. Did public official Devono see fit to mention this matter to the public? Of course not. You, the public, will be the last to know about what deeply concerns you. Mon Schools is fully intent upon opposing public will on the school siting to impose its own reckless, dangerous, and profoundly incompetent decision.
See below what we now know, via our Freedom of Information Act request of the WV Division of Highways. Read the rest of this entry »
THE FORKED TONGUE: MON SCHOOLS’ OUTREACH TO THE PUBLICFar too often, Mon Schools can be counted on to be the last agency to publicize what the public most needs to know.
It was repeated FOIA requests, formal and informal, by multiple individuals, that forced Mon Schools to put online some limited information about the intended new Eastwood School on the Mileground.
Only through the inaccurate information posted in those materials, but information nonetheless, were we able to figure out that Mon Schools seemed intent upon purchasing about 2.5 acres of the trailer park for the school site. We then confirmed this with the owner of the trailer park who had a tentative agreement, reached several months ago, to sell the land to Mon Schools. An agreement that would only be stopped by outside force, namely, the pending lawsuit.
Mon Schools publicized this life-changing decision to nobody, apparently, to none of the public, least of all to the residents of the trailer park, who had been led to believe for many months that they would be getting a new school in their backyard, rather than being evicted by the school, that is, having their eviction guaranteed by Mon Schools’ purchase.
That’s business as usual in Monongalia County Schools.
And Mon Schools has the gall to lament its outreach problem.
Agencies that operate covertly, whose officials then publicly despair at their inability to reach out to the public, don’t have an outreach problem. They have a forked tongue problem.
See also: doublespeak.
This year’s contest, noted at School Bus Fleet:
Thomas Built Buses has announced details for its sixth annual Children’s Choice School Bus Driver of the Year essay contest.
Students in kindergarten through sixth grade are invited to submit essays of at least 90 words to nominate their favorite school bus drivers. In their own words and through illustrations, students can describe what they think makes their school bus drivers special. The winning essays will be featured on the Thomas Built Buses website when the judging is complete. Read the rest of this entry »
Susan Eason reports:
The Woodburn Association of Neighbors will hold its next meeting on Monday, March 28 at 7:00 p.m. Location is to be announced. Please mark your calendar and plan to join us. We hope to meet more frequently so more folks can be involved!
If you have items for the agenda please email me (susanchris@frontier.com).
Items so far on agenda:
– Spring Clean Up Day (April 16?), Planting of Flowers
– Housing Authority Update (?)
– MUB Storm Drain Marking
– Year of the Neighborhood Celebrations
– “Walk -Through/Drive-through” the neighborhood with City Manager, Terrence Moore, Thursday, April 14, 10 a.m.-12 noon.
Minutes are below. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dominion Post reports today that West Taylor Elementary school, in north-central WV, was recently built for 6.6 million dollars by the same architects designing Eastwood Elementary. West Taylor’s capacity is 300 students.
The green school in Berkeley County is being built for a reported 13 million dollars. It has a 600 student capacity.
Meanwhile Eastwood Elementary, including land costs and mine mitigation costs and so on, would cost about 20 million dollars. It would have a 450 student capacity. (The Eastwood schematic design incorporates a complete school of at least 545 student capacity, the construction of which would apparently take the final cost over 21 million dollars. These are only currently known or understood costs; the real expense could be far higher.)
And this is one of the putrid scandals of Eastwood Elementary: the cost. The lack of bang for the buck. And the utter disservice to both Woodburn and Easton elementaries.
If West Taylor Elementary could be built for 300 students at cost of 6.6 million dollars, why could not a new Woodburn school of 300 students be built for about the same price? Subtract 7 million dollars from the 20 million dollar Eastwood price tag, and you have $13 million dollars left over to build a separate green school for Easton, possibly including plenty of money left over to buy land, since this school would also need to be only about 300 student capacity. (Otherwise, Easton Elementary could be built on land Mon Schools already owns, on the 94 acres of University High on the Easton Elementary/North Elementary catchment border. Just so would a new Woodburn Elementary be built on land Mon Schools already owns, the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds.)
Doing this would provide two new schools in good and safe locations, while also providing an ADDITIONAL 150 seats of capacity, at the least (beyond the Eastwood size of 450). Read the rest of this entry »
So much for former BOE President/current board member Nancy Walker’s claim that a school on the Mileground would allow the children of the trailer park to walk to the new school. The school instead ensures the eviction of an unreported number of children in the trailer park.
Dominion Post reports:
Most of the park’s residents, [Monica Milburn] said, are low-income or on disability. Milburn is a single mother of four children, ranging in age from 10 to 3. Her three older children attend Woodburn Elementary.
“I was excited about the new school,” she said. “Now I’m frustrated. All of us could be basically homeless in 90 days. I’m not sure if I could come up with the money to move my trailer.”
Eviction of the trailer park children. There goes the validity of yet another claim of Mon Schools that the Mileground site was a good site.
Undermined, sewage flooded, expensive, cramped, congested, high traffic, vehicle exhaust polluted, noise polluted, and requiring the eviction of children.
Great job, Mon Schools. You really do the county proud.
The trailer park giving the residents a 90 day eviction notice on March 8 allows the children to finish their school year at Woodburn Elementary. After which, who knows where they will wind up? The children and parents had been led to believe by Mon Schools that they would be attending a new ecologically oriented school in their backyard. Instead a parking lot has been schematically designed in place of their trailers (see below). And the play field where their children were to play at the new school is also now planned to replace their trailer sites. Cruel irony.
All the while Mon Schools has insisted that it was unwilling to forcefully evict residents in Woodburn to expand the Woodburn schoolgrounds (though no such evictions were ever needed or to our knowledge ever even suggested by the public), but apparently Mon Schools has no problem ensuring that parents and children will be evicted from its perversely preferred site on the Mileground. Ensuring eviction is precisely the consequence of Mon Schools’ current informal but pending deal to buy the land. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Suncrest Middle School truly overcrowded, or is this a ploy by the BOE to move out the middle school and move in Suncrest Primary?
Where would Suncrest Middle School be moved to? To the Mountaineer Middle School campus? Thus bringing down the number of middle schools in the Morgantown area from 4 to 3 even as enrollment holds steady or climbs?
The Dominion Post reports today that the Suncrest 6th grade is 2 students away from being over capacity, but it also reports that 25 of those 6 graders don’t even live in the Suncrest Middle School catchment and instead have been allowed to transfer into the school, rather than attend South Middle School or Mountaineer Middle School or Westwood Middle School, the schools of their actual catchment. Why were these 6th graders, fresh out of their elementary schools, allowed to transfer into a middle school that is then said to be overcrowded?
That’s not an overcrowding problem. That’s a transfer problem.
And that’s just 6th grade, where nearly one-sixth of the grade, an entire class, consists of out-of-catchment transfers. How many Suncrest students in grades 7 and 8 are also transfers into the “overcrowded” school?
It is dishonest to say that a grade, or a school, bloated by transfers is overcrowded. The superintendent has the responsibility for allowing or disallowing student transfers. Given the Dominion Post report – which is all the public has to go on since the BOE continues to refuse to make its meetings available online or on TV – there is no short-term overcrowding problem. There is instead a superintendent problem. The superintendent is approving transfers that he should not.
Just as Mon Schools would have far better served the students by building a third high school, instead of relocating UHS to a giant campus in the country, Mon Schools would do well to build a fifth middle school. Shrinking instead from 4 to 3 middle schools is not a quality option. Nor is moving a middle school out of Suncrest. What are the Superintendent’s intentions? His analysis of Suncrest makes no sense. The reality is different, and the public is once again shut out.
Watch out, Suncrest. Watch out, City and County. When the Superintendent claims that his poor transfer decisions are instead an overcrowding problem, one can see that the hidden reality of what is going on in Mon Schools is quite different from what is proclaimed on the surface.
A new school on the Woodburn schoolgrounds would relieve the crowding at surrounding schools and keep them from growing out of control in size. Especially nearby students who would otherwise attend Easton, Brookhaven, and Mountainview elementaries could attend a new school in Woodburn, since part of their sprawling catchments virtually border the Woodburn schoolgrounds. Also, students from South Park who currently travel all the way across town to attend the high quality schools of Suncrest Primary and North Elementary could instead find a good and much closer school in Woodburn.
The Woodburn schoolgrounds continue to be a great and badly needed place for a new school.
Notice that Easton Elementary is misplaced on the catchment map (above/below). In reality, Easton school sits a couple miles south of its mapped location, below the “a” in “Cheat,” exactly where US 119 forms a sharp elbow (within that elbow, or nub on the map). However, the map falsely yet curiously places Easton Elementary at the spot of the new University High School campus, which, with its 94 acres, would provide plenty of free land upon which to build a highly accessible new elementary school to replace the grossly inadequate existing Easton school.
These are 2005 school districting maps, the most recent maps Mon Schools provided when requested by FOIA.
Not only do the Woodburn schoolgrounds all but border the catchments of Mountainview, Brookhaven, and Easton elementaries, the schoolgrounds are also close to North Elementary’s catchment and part of Suncrest Primary’s catchment. This is great positioning for a rebuilt or new school, near the conjoining of the catchments of these five old schools, which are all crowded or overcrowded or larger than should be.
A new school on the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds? It only makes sense.
3 representatives of the Teachers’ and Service Workers’ unions are scheduled to speak tonight at Mon Schools’ BOE meeting, at least in part about the Superintendent’s Office Manager opening. Hard to say what exactly these workers’ representatives are speaking about though. Do even the workers know? If so, how? There is no notice at AFT-WV or WV SSPA. Are the unions still relying on the establishment media to do their publicity, information, education, outreach, notice, and reporting for them? Good luck with that. No wonder Mon Schools officials evidently feel they can do whatever they want whether it makes any sense, legal or otherwise, at all. They are allowed to operate in a virtual vacuum, all but underground.
Or are the “unions” (workers associations) still relying on Mon Schools for information and publicity? Is the Pope Muslim? When the Pope journeys to Mecca, Mon Schools may help publicize the workers’ concerns. Mon Schools continues to refuse to broadcast its public board meetings live or even to make the meetings available shortly afterward online via podcast.
Nevertheless, there appear to be a few issues boiling. Aren’t there always? Not simmering. Boiling. Or searing. Mon Schools’ refuses to operate other than with the heat turned all the way up in violation of any sensible range, and often in violation of any regard for statute and law. What a sound and exemplary example for the children, for the students, are the officials of Mon Schools. And the top school officials wonder why people need get all geared up to put out their fires. The only wonder is that the people and the workers don’t gear up more, to take the matches and the kitchen away from them, to turn the kitchen over to the workers to run as they much better could and well should.
Mon Schools intends to spend $21-$25 million of state, federal, and mostly county funds to build a brand new elementary school, and the best it can do is provide a mere 545 seats at a badly congested, high traffic, undermined intersection, sewage dump site?
It’s just wrong. It’s wrong every way you slice it.
It’s wrong to not use that $21-$25 million dollars to build more seats.
It’s wrong to not use the money to build two 300-seat schools, that will provide two gymnasiums, two community centers, two local playgrounds.
It’s wrong to not use the tens of millions of dollars to build both a city school and a country school. The city and the country both should be provided for.
It’s wrong to not use the tens of millions of dollars to build a city school in Woodburn, in Woodburn Elementary’s catchment, a long established stable residential neighborhood that would welcome such investment and redevelopment.
It’s wrong not to build a country school in Easton Elementary’s catchment for use by both the rural residents of Easton’s catchment – and possibly by the neighboring North Elementary area sprawl developments.
If affordable land cannot be found elsewhere in Easton’s catchment, it’s wrong to not build one of two elementaries on the Easton/North catchment border, on land that Mon Schools already owns, the 94 acres of the UHS campus.
It’s wrong to use tens of millions of dollars and not provide two schools and 600 or 700 seats for both the city and the country rather than one school with only 545 seats at an unstable, rapidly developing commuter and commercial throughway.
It’s wrong to use $21-$25 million and not invest in two separate areas, building two facilities in good locations that are entirely affordable because they are free, the land being already owned by Mon Schools.
When well sited free land is available for two schools, it’s wrong to pay $325,000 per acre for 11.3 acres of land that is 70 percent undermined, and filled with sewage, a mere few dozen feet below the surface. The 11.3 acres cost about $3.7 million. Additional mine mitigation costs alone will be about $1 million, while the cost of sewage remediation (if possible) remains a great unknown.
When well sited freely owned land is available, it’s terribly wrong to spend about $5 million for purchasing horribly sited, health damaging and dangerous land for a highly unpopular school that because of its unstable and careless siting would pose huge civil liability risks for taxpayers during every day of its operation.
It’s wrong to use any money at all to build in a vehicle exhaust polluted and a vehicle noise polluted dangerous, high traffic, incredibly congested intersection of two principal arterial highways. It’s also not lawful.
It’s wrong to claim for months that the school will provide for a couple dozen children from an adjacent trailer park who could walk to school and then arrange to purchase and evict two thirds of the trailer park to build the school parking lot on it. Read the rest of this entry »
Now, if you had told a sane person that the new WV School Building Authority funded “green” school in Morgantown would be built on a sewage dump, at a highly congested intersection of heavily traveled roads, where no one or nearly no one could walk or safely bike to, and if you would have told a sane person that the WV SBA and Mon Schools would spend between $21 million and $25 million to build this Pre-K thru 5th grade school for 545 students, then that sane person would have been reasonably expected to laugh, curse, or vow to file any number of lawsuits to stop such insanity, such gross negligence of young children, such a stupid and radical disservice to the taxpaying public of West Virginia and Monongalia County.
Such is the case of the intended Eastwood Elementary to be located at the dangerous, jammed, and unhealthy intersection of two principal arterial highways WV 705 and US 119, on the “Mileground” that in name and actuality sounds like a racetrack, and when not jammed too often is.
Two words for this siting: stupid…negligent.
The civil liability risk for this site is potentially immense. The first school bus that gets sideswiped and sends children to the hospital in the roundabout projected to border the schoolgrounds, in 2015 when both highways are expanded and the intersection is moved to the end of the short school drive, should be the subject of lawsuits. Any rash of asthma outbreaks, or heaven forbid, childhood leukemia, or potentially fatal pneumonia, or any other heart and lung and blood related disease like bronchitis, wheezing, cancer, or heart problems, due to the elevated pollution levels created by the scientifically known vehicle exhaust zone of the high traffic roads that frame the site, should be the subject of lawsuits.
Any bacteria-related diseases due to students spending time at the bio-pond, or the proposed orchard, and the proposed nature trail, not only air-flooded by vehicle exhaust but situated at or below the levels of the mines and the ravine-side mine portals and the old septic sites and sewage drainage fields, and the mines underlying the entire school that are flooded with sewage from the longtime adjacent trailer park that to the best of anyone’s knowledge continues to directly release its sewage into the mines a few dozen feet below the school grounds, and above the north-facing slope of the schoolgrounds, should be the subject of extensive lawsuits.
Why? Because there are state statutes and state laws and WV Constitutional protections that prohibit schools from being built on sites that threaten, let alone damage, the health and safety and well-being of children. And there are legally binding state policies that for obvious safety reasons explicitly prohibit school sites from being located at arterial highways, and heavily traveled roads, and congested roads, and site where such factors could contribute to even the possibility of entrapment, let alone the reality of a kind of daily entrapment due to rush hour congestion and high traffic. These AT SITE highway safety violations will be further compounded when 705 is expanded to 4 lanes within the next several years, which will eliminate the safety lane outside the white lines that currently runs along the ravine and valley edge.
The site is essentially entrapped and will continue to be. The site is dangerously situated and will be ever more so. The site is traffic-noise and vehicle-exhaust polluted and will ever increasingly be. The site is subject to tens upon tens of thousands of vehicles per day and will ever increasingly be.
This wantonly negligent site is highly unstable, not only physically due to the mine voids the run a few dozen feet under the entire site but also developmentally unstable. Sheetz gas station, typically a huge operation, has expressed strong interest in siting a gas station at the intersection by the school. Plenty of land will be available for purchase very near the intersection over the next few years, immediately bordering the school.
Traffic is expected to increase by about 50 percent or more over the first two decades of the school.
School intersection expansion and other immediately adjacent highway expansions, over and above the coming intersection shift and the doubling of lanes of Wv 705 and US 119, are likely, including an extension of WV 705 through the intersection with US 119 as a 3 lane .7 of a mile cut to route 857. This could add additional tens of thousand of vehicles, including diesel truck traffic to the school site and intersection.
Similarly the long desired expressway from the center of the university and downtown up Falling Run to within a quarter mile or an eighth of a mile or less of the school could bring an additional tens of thousands of vehicles per day onto the arterial highways framing the school grounds.
And the school grounds literally contain a vast sewage dump in the mine voids a few dozen feet below the surface of the land (and above the schoolgrounds’ back slope), an unstable lay of land that studies of the past year note is ripe for potentially catastrophic subsidence, ground collapse, thus the expensive mine mitigation plans, which may or may not work.
The state and local educational agencies have suffered a catastrophic collapse of brain and heart cells in pushing to site a facility for small children at this grossly negligent site, highly unstable, health damaging and safety endangering, in clearcut violation of binding state statutes, laws, and constitutional provisions.
Even more impressive is the availability of healthy, safe, and otherwise high quality school sites that Mon Schools already owns: the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds for Woodburn Elementary and the 94 acre UHS campus for Easton Elementary. The UHS sprawling campus is on the border of Easton and North elementaries’ catchments, where in a fact of high comedy, the most recent Mon Schools districting maps already (mistakenly) show Easton Elementary to be located, near or at the UHS campus, rather than at the base of Easton Hill. The spacious UHS campus is a highly logical and very functional place for Easton Elementary. Likewise, the Woodburn schoolgrounds are the hands-down logical and functional place for Woodburn Elementary. So it is that not only is the consolidated Eastwood Elementary intersection location stupendously horrid and wrong and incredibly expensive, increasingly damaging and risky, the two alternative locations for a couple of modest-sized elementary schools are especially beneficial, appropriate, highly affordable, healthy and safe.
What choice did Mon Schools make to situate and educate young children? We all know. Mon Schools chose the sewage dump.
And they wonder why anyone objects. LOL
Laughing Out Loud.
Suing in court.
Above is a south-facing design for a building of approximately 60,000 square feet and about 500 students on slightly expanded Woodburn schoolgrounds. A rough mock-up that could be variously modified.
Terrace Elementary has six levels but none of the levels is more than two stories above the ground, due to the incline of the sidehill that would be somewhat excavated and graded.
The primary school is in blue, levels 1 and 2. The blue double dots represent two stories. The green single dots represent one story, first floor.
The grade school is in the new gray section, levels 3 and 4, and in the orange renovated original building, levels 5 and 6. Again, the double dots represent two stories above ground level on the graded sidehill. The gray single dots represent one story above ground level, which is the level of the basement of the orange original building. The orange double dots are of course the two story original building remade.
Triple or quadruple wide terrace stairs (like WVU’s Mountain Lair terrace stairs but fully bounded) would be sky-lit, and would lead from drop-off/pick-up to the fourth level, which is at the level of the basement of the original structure. (Two elevators would be available for the infirm or differently abled.)
The two main entrances to the building, for students and visitors, are the yellow dots, one for buses, one for cars. Card access entry would be provided to teachers and other workers for several of the other entrances.
Busing is off Richwood Avenue, via Hartman Run Road (857). Car driving is also via Richwood by way of Hartman (through the loop briefly onto Charles Avenue then Fortney Street).
Terrace Elementary provides for the large consolidated school if need be. It could be readily downsized to a small or more modest scale if Easton gets its own school, as it should (perhaps on the 94 acres of the UHS campus, which is on border of the catchments of Easton Elementary and North Elementary).
Terrace Elementary preserves and restores the original building.
Terrace Elementary improves the view of the current Woodburn Elementary site by putting a play field and playground on top of the hill, which maximizes viewing: providing a far greater view for playing outdoors than even the current playground and play field.
Terrace Elementary also improves on the current Woodburn Elementary by removing the current traffic and congestion of buses from Charles Avenue. Of course buses and cars could still use Charles Avenue and other routes besides Richwood, but the main traffic would be handled by the main street in the area, which is Richwood.
The school is south-facing to maximize daylighting and energy efficiency.
If Terrace Elementary were to be a green school, geothermal pipes could be sunk beneath the play field.
A stage should be added to any one of three sides of the gym. Or, a sidehill (indoor) auditorium could be attached to the north or west side of the gym.
The primary school and the elementary school could each have their own libraries, computer rooms, and art and music rooms – especially if the computer rooms & libraries and the art & music rooms used partly shared space, or if ample space is otherwise provided, which it could be.
Using the spacious and sky-lighted terraced stairs several times per day would provide a unique aesthetic experience and provide significant health benefits to the students and staff. The terraced stairs with broad landings would provide great spaces for murals and other artwork, for certain types of science experiments, for vegetated green space, and for experimental out-of-classroom activities.
Additional parking and playground space for the school site could be obtained sooner or later by way of willing sellers.
Terrace elementary would be a great nearby school for students to attend who would otherwise attend Easton, Brookhaven, and Mountainview since the borders of their crowded catchments are so very near to Terrace Elementary. Also, students from South Park who currently travel all the way across town to attend the high quality schools of Suncrest Primary and North Elementary could instead find a good nearby school in Terrace Elementary.
The Woodburn schoolgrounds continue to be a great and badly needed place for a new school.
Notice that Easton Elementary is misplaced on the catchment map (above/below). In reality, Easton school sits a couple miles south of its mapped location, below the “a” in “Cheat,” exactly where US 119 forms a sharp elbow (within that elbow, or nub on the map). However, the map falsely yet curiously places Easton Elementary at the spot of the new University High School campus, which, with its 94 acres, would provide plenty of free land upon which to build a highly accessible new elementary school to replace the grossly inadequate existing Easton school.
These are 2005 school districting maps, the most recent maps Mon Schools provided when requested by FOIA.
Not only do the Woodburn schoolgrounds all but border the catchments of Mountainview, Brookhaven, and Easton elementaries, the schoolgrounds are also close to North Elementary’s catchment and part of Suncrest Primary’s catchment. This is great positioning for a rebuilt or new school, near the conjoining of the catchments of these five old schools, which are all crowded or overcrowded or larger than should be. Read the rest of this entry »
How working for Mon Schools qualifies you for food stamps:
People want to know what is going on with the bus drivers, well I can tell you what is going on with this one! After our extra trips were subcontracted out to different coach buses because of no fault of the bus drivers and the higher ups got a big raise, this entitled me to gub stubs. That is no joke. I went to the WEST VIRGINIA HEALTH AND HUMAN RESOURCES in Fairmont and sat for 2hrs 33min in an office full of unemployed people down on their luck and waited. My number was called, felt like I was going to jail, walked down this long hallway, was put in this little room and waited some more. A man comes in, asked what I was here for, I told him I wanted to know what I was qualified for! He asked me lots of personal questions and then the big one, where do I work, and he asked for a copy of my pay stubs. After all this, guess what I qualified for: grub stubs. Now that’s something to be proud of. I work for the BOE and I qualify for public assistance. I wonder if administration can say that!! A proud moment in my life. Just wait till I get my pretty little card and I will share it with the rest of you. Now you know what is going on with this Mon County bus driver. Have a good day and hope we get our raise.
Thanks to all who came out to the Woodburn Neighbors Association meeting last evening at Woodburn Elementary. It was good to make introductions and to clear the air on a few issues. We’ll look forward to further clearing of the air in the near future.
New Woodburn Community School 
