Woodburn Elementary Has Been Abandoned And Written Off

September 20, 2011 — newcommunityschool

NEGLECT UPON NEGLECT FOR THE AYP TEST PROFICIENT SCHOOL

If your children attend most any of the large elementary schools in Monongalia County, including Mountainview Elementary, one of the largest elementary schools in the entire state, you can apparently by law send them to Woodburn Elementary, because that little elementary school passed the AYP test whereas most all of the large elementary schools did not.

But think again about doing so, because Mon Schools seems to have given up on Woodburn Elementary:

The lawn hasn’t been cut in so long, they could now practically mow, rake, and bale it for hay.

And the children sit and wait for the buses forever, which seem to come later and later. Drive past the school an hour after it has “let out” for the day, and you may well see the students still there, waiting for a bus ride home. The students wait, and wait, and wait. And so do the teachers.

[UPDATE: AS IT HAPPENED, ON THIS DAY A BUS OF STUDENTS WAS NOT PICKED UP AT WOODBURN UNTIL AN HOUR AND A HALF AFTER SCHOOL “LET OUT.” SCHOOL AT WOODBURN LETS OUT AT 3:35. STUDENTS WERE NOT PICKED UP THIS DAY UNTIL AFTER 5:00.]

Is this what an AYP passing school deserves? Neglect upon neglect?

Way to go Mon Schools. Make sure you don’t get too much levy money, because then you might actually have to use it for the good.

And then there is the City of Morgantown.

Last year the City was asked by a parent to put a stop sign on the city road that Ts another city road where it cuts right through the Woodburn school campus. No luck.

A stop sign on a city road intersection by a city school? What sense would that make? Read the rest of this entry »

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Mon Schools Aims Low

September 19, 2011 — newcommunityschool

LOW STANDARDS NOTHING NEW FOR MONONGALIA COUNTY SCHOOLS

The Dominion Post reports today that if Mon Schools would get too much money from an approved levy due to raised property appraisals, then Mon Schools will essentially give some of the money back, not collect it. Plus, Mon Schools is already asking for only 75 percent of the levy amount that it could ask for, by state law.

And then Mon Schools is going to turn around and whine and complain that it cannot hire more badly needed bus drivers because it has no funds.

Note how the Dominion Post dropped that issue like a hot potato as soon as the levy vote came up.

The service workers association AND the teachers association should be screaming for a full levy.

Or are the Associations content to let Mon Schools administration and board boss the workers like they are sharecroppers and treat the students like they are less than even that.

As the Dominion Post noted, much of the levy money would stay local.

Local money stimulates the local economy. It’s good for the whole area, the whole county.

But Mon Schools seems to want to starve the local economy and underfund its employees and students and their activities.

Shame on Mon Schools for not trying to raise more badly needed money. Mon Schools “leadership” is so backwards it hurts. It hurts everyone.

Why not aim high, Mon Schools? For a change. Badly needed.

The rest of the tragi-comedy in the paper today: Mon Schools “hopes” to “refurbish” all the elementary school playgrounds. Now, I wonder why Mon Schools would think to do that or to at least mention it (and laughably not promise to do so but only to “hope”)? Hmm, maybe because anyone with elementary schoolchildren knows the upper administrators have shafted those schoolchildren, regarding Eastwood, Skyview, Mylan Park, and the massive Mountainview and North schools. Read the rest of this entry »

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3 To The Hospital In Wreck Near Notorious Eastwood Elementary School Site

September 13, 2011 — newcommunityschool

FOUR-CAR COLLISION PORTENDS THE FUTURE AT EASTWOOD ELEMENTARY

The wrecks in the area are a constant. Mon Schools is willing to roll loaded dice with your children by building the new Eastwood Elementary on the Mileground in clear violation of state safety mandates that prohibit new schools being located in entrapping, or high traffic, or congested, or arterial highway zones. And that is exactly, as everyone knows, what the state route 705 “bypass” and the Mileground road (US 119) happen to be, along with their intersection. The 705/119 Eastwood location meets all of these school-banning criteria, and more.

The wreck yesterday caused motorists to be stuck in traffic for two and half hours and longer. Four cars smashed. Three people to the hospital. The arterial highway, route 705, closed.

But the negligent officials at Mon Schools persist in site prep to build a school there. The state should intervene and remove these officials from office, but the state has approved the site and continues to defend in court the site from an ongoing lawsuit.

Are they insane? Do they not care about the well-being of children, and their parents, and the communities? Is this what it has come to in West Virginia? Is this where we build schools now, in unstable commercial high traffic smash and crash polluted death zones? Why does it not seem to matter that these sites are explicitly banned by state mandates?

The local personal injury lawyers should start building their files, now, in anticipation of leveling massive civil and even criminal lawsuits at Mon Schools and the state education agencies, in anticipation of future calamities that fall upon the young schoolchildren, ages 3 to 11.

No wonder most everyone you talk to who happens to mention Eastwood Elementary calls it stupid, or lousy, or wrong, or completely nuts:

September 13, 2011
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Don’t Fund The Calamity

September 11, 2011 — newcommunityschool

NO B & O TAX DOLLARS TO THE MILEGROUND

The B & O taxes on the construction contracts for Eastwood Elementary will be paid to the city of Morgantown and will amount to perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars. The county school district (Mon Schools) would like to see these dollars spent on or around the impending Eastwood Mileground school site, as such B & O taxes have often been spent in the past, at or near the school building projects from which the taxes are drawn. However, this time the school building situation is radically different. No B & O taxes should be spent anywhere at or near the Eastwood Mileground site:
  • First, it is not proper to do so. In formal letter to Mon Schools, the City Council opposed closing Woodburn and contributing to “sprawl” with a new school facility. The county schools acted counter to the city on this, in both instances (in voting to close Woodburn and in voting against locating a school next to Mountaineer Middle). So now with Eastwood on the Mileground the city has more commuter-strangling sprawl, no future school in Woodburn or in walking location to anyone in the city, and a new patch of destroyed green space.
  • Second, the Eastwood site sits at the very edge of the city where the city has zero or virtually zero interests that are not properly funded under the jurisdiction of Mon Schools and/or the WV DOT’s Division of Highways (or, for that matter, WVU, which owns the surrounding lands and which refused Mon Schools the higher quality site up across route 705). Even the adjacent armory site which the city will acquire in a year or two from the Army will be sold, or if the city retains ownership of it, will require city funds to develop.
  • Third, it is not accurate to claim, as was claimed in a recent City Council meeting, that the city B&O taxes related to Mountaineer Middle were spent on a road there (actually a school drive) that ostensibly benefits the city. It doesn’t. The drive is of no use to anyone who isn’t attending a school function. (There is a small apartment building just inside of the drive entrance that might now or at some point house city residents but if so those residents do not use the vast majority of what is essentially a school drive, just its brief access point. School traffic accounts for either the overwhelming or the total amount of traffic on that road. It’s of no use to the city and never will be.)
  • Fourth, any agreement in general or “in perpetuity” that would obligate city B&O funds to be spent at or near county school projects is wrong. That would in effect be a blind abdication of city funds to county decision-making, even, as in the case of Eastwood, where the county deliberately contravenes the city’s wishes and values.
  • Fifth, the city should use Eastwood-related B&O taxes to purchase and revitalize the old Woodburn schoolgrounds, which the county school district has let fall into serious disrepair. (It would be good if a switchback bicycle and walking trail would be built from the schoolgrounds directly down the hill through the virtually adjacent undeveloped section of Whitmore Park and then over or across Route 7 to Marilla Park.)

Put it all together, and there is no justification for the city spending a dime of B&O taxes anywhere near the Eastwood Mileground site, let alone upon the site. And, also as noted, there are quite compelling reasons why the B&O taxes should be spent in the neighborhood of Woodburn, to revitalize the old schoolgrounds in a way that the county schools never did. The county schools opted to dispose of the Woodburn schoolgrounds. The city has a duty to obtain and to revitalize those grounds. That will take money, B&O money, to guard and to fix what the county is leaving in its extremely unfortunate wake.

Talk to most anyone about the Eastwood Mileground site and they will tell you what a horrible site it is for a school. It’s obvious. We’ve explained how terrible it is many times over. The city of Morgantown should do its duty and not enable Mon Schools in their failure to do theirs.  Read the rest of this entry »
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