New Woodburn Community School

ARE POLLUTED WITH IGNORANCE AND NEGLECT

Last night at the school board meeting, the architect hired by the board, Ted Shriver, presented 2 new bubble depictions for the possible configuration of the green school. The slightly shifted building (there could only be a slight shift given space constraints) was the first of a number of items one might note.

And then came the staggering comment from President Barbara Parsons. She wondered during board-hired architect Shriver’s presentation if the impending roundabout was actually going to be located as he depicted it, far removed from the current intersection, placed up in the field much closer to the intended new consolidated “green” school. For a moment Shriver hesitated, before replying that he had merely overlain the WV Division of Highway design for the impending intersection shift. In other words, yes, the intersection is set to be right up close to the school. This has been known since April, six months ago.

Architect Shriver might have added that he had rather accurately hand-drawn that intersection shift and presented it to the board during the June 8th special meeting, when Barbara Parsons and the rest of the board had reaffirmed their initial (March) approval of the site. He might have added that two of the five school board members (one including the BOE Vice-President) are two of the four MPO officers (one including the MPO President) who coordinated the WVDOH meeting in Morgantown in April where the DOH/MPO presented the same intersection shift and road expansion design diagrams.

Is the intersection really going to be there? the Board President asked.

This is what is happening in Monongalia County Schools. The Superintendent recommends a site that he obviously should not recommend for various health, traffic, pollution, education, and community reasons. And the BOE either callously or carelessly rubber stamps it. Is the intersection really going to be there? No, the DOH and the MPO have just been doodling these many months. And the public has raised an outcry this whole long time, over the dire fate of their children, about sheer figments of their imagination!

Well now you know President Parsons what you should have known all along. And you voted anyway last night to send a statement of intent to WVU for the BOE to purchase that dirty, sickening, and potentially deadly land there. How close to air poison is too close, President Parsons? As Education Director at Monongalia General Hospital you should know better. The whole board, and its superintendent, should know better.

Also of note is that the BOE intends to purchase more acreage at the site than it has ever previously publicly discussed buying. Read the rest of this entry »

WHO VOTED TO MAKE CHILDREN SICK BY BUILDING A SCHOOL IN TRAFFIC POLLUTION?

Childhood leukemia, anyone? See the comprehensive study on traffic pollution below. The intended new consolidated elementary “green” school at the intersection of the congested, high traffic thruways WV 705 & US 119 is sick, sick, sick.

Also see: Asthma Elementary and No Health and Safety and The Road to Charleston and Damaging Children for Life.
Read the rest of this entry »

THE SBA OPERATING AGAINST PUBLIC WILL AND GOOD SENSE

(See also: The SBA: Institutionalizing Crap)

The creation of the West Virginia state School Building Authority (SBA) about two decades ago has taken power away from the people. The SBA makes an end run around the public by way of the state and federal money it gives out, often for unpopular school closing and consolidation projects, such as the new consolidated “green” elementary school slated for the WV 705 & US 119 intersection in Morgantown. Such SBA projects are pushed by local officials who thereby satisfy local and state monied interests and powers, including the SBA itself, of which the state Governor is President. Accommodating the dictates of the SBA advances careers.

The SBA often forces school districts to take care of multiple issues in one fell swoop (consolidation): no vote required, the public taken out of the process. Voters are often reasonably unwilling to vote for local bonds to close and consolidate neighborhood schools rather than to rebuild them, or to fix them. The SBA makes the public superfluous. For a school district who has a marginally competent or lousy, unpopular, untrustworthy superintendent who therefore cannot or will not attempt to get a bond passed for even worthy projects, the state SBA can simply provide the money desired by local developers and unpopular and negligent administrators and at least appear to be addressing real problems. The power to decide what schools go where and when was taken away from the public by the creation of the SBA. By partnering implicitly or explicitly with a local administrator and an impotent or complicit or negligent school board, the SBA simply ignores public will and knowledge and keeps money circulating at public expense but against public will, and often against best knowledge and practices.

For such unpopular and destructive maneuvering, the ideal leader becomes a  local smooth talker to try to pretty up the proceedings, or even to try to dupe the local populace. Securing SBA state funds naturally gets the local administrator in good with local land and business barons and state big shots. It’s sick; it’s systemic, undemocratic, corrupting.

As far back as her vital 1997 study, “An Economical, Thorough, and Efficient School System: The West Virginia School Building Authority “Economy of Scale” Numbers,” West Virginia attorney and professor Deirdre Purdy explained the degraded state of affairs brought on by the creation of the SBA: Read the rest of this entry »

OPPOSING THE MILEGROUND SITE

Via WAJR:

The proposed green school that would be built on the mileground has become an issue in the [school board] race, with [Harry] Bertrum and [Junior] Taylor wanting to slow the project down and reconsider the location of the new school.

“I’ve had so many people from all over the county, a majority of people that don’t want it built there. Why are we building something that there is no public mandate for?” wonders Taylor. … Read the rest of this entry »

A FOUR-YEAR TICKET TO TYRANNY?

In the recent interview of school board candidates by the Dominion Post, candidate Mike Kelly says, “we have involved everybody” in the decision to site the new green elementary school.

He could not be more wrong. The people the school board involved the least were those the most affected, aside from the schoolchildren: the parents and the general public.

Mon Schools never sent out a notice about school closing and consolidation individually to the parents (through their children in the schools) until 2.5 months after a new school site had been decided on by the board. The only reason they even sent out a notice at that point (the second to last day of school) was due to the pressure from parents who had themselves prepared a note to send out about the upcoming Woodburn and Easton Closure hearings.

So, Mike Kelly, if you really do want to “involve everybody” – especially those most affected – you need to send out announcements and explanations to each individual parent through the schools in a timely manner. This is commonly done for all sorts of school matters large and small. So why was it not done and done repeatedly in this monumental instance? Are there larger decisions made about schools than their possible closure and consolidation? Board members are not elected to proceed like dictators and tyrants, they are elected to involve and be responsive to the public.

Furthermore, it is completely inappropriate to keep the school district’s preferred site for the new school secret for months, then to finally reveal it publicly only to vote to confirm it as the new site 7 days later. Wow, the public had a whole 7 days to jump right in there and examine the site and give their opinion which the school board clearly values oh so much. Read the rest of this entry »

MIKE KELLY CONDEMNS THE FACTS

In conversation with Dominion Post editors, school board candidate Mike Kelly falsely claims “homes would have to be condemned” around the Woodburn schoolgrounds to build a new school there. That was the outrageous option outlined by the school board’s architect, which would have condemned many homes (taking them by eminent domain). The Woodburn group’s plan condemns zero homes and would purchase two or three from willing sellers only.

Board candidate Junior Taylor is right to reject the grotesque Mileground site for the new elementary school. He points to the obvious mistrust and contention generated by the board, the irresponsible haste (to put it politely and mildly) of the board, the secrecy, the isolated decision-making and the overall inappropriate decision to locate a school in the polluted middle of high traffic and congestion.

Junior Taylor has otherwise had first-hand experience with Mon Schools administration’s callousness and incompetence in having to fight hard for the appropriate best education for his child.

Junior Taylor is by far the best choice for school board on the ballot this November.

MARK MANCHIN AND WV SCHOOL BUILDING AUTHORITY IN TROUBLE USING SBA MONEY

Today the Charleston Daily Mail reports again on another April SBA grant in controversy:

[SBA Director Mark Manchin] said Kanawha [Board of Education] is close to obtaining property for [a new SBA grant] school with just more than two weeks left before the deadline [of November 1st stipulated by the SBA]. … The building authority granted the money to the district in April, but said the award would be withdrawn if the county hadn’t lined up property for the new school by Nov. 1. … Manchin said the school system didn’t have to own the property by that deadline, he just “needed to see some movement” from the county by then. “That’s not the drop-dead date, if you will,” he said. … Manchin said the School Building Authority had to impose deadlines on the funding because it came from federal stimulus money, which also came with strict deadlines for the authority. Kanawha school officials would not disclose the location of the new property Tuesday.

Sound familiar? Mon Schools kept its SBA grant green school site secret until mid-March, too late for the WV Division of Highways to incorporate into its plans for the DoH public hearing in April about the 705/119 Mileground road expansion. Read the rest of this entry »

AND SO IS THE SUPERINTENDENT

It has been said before and needs to be said again: the Monongalia County School Board and the Superintendent in their professional school capacities are awful. Such a great example for the schoolchildren of the county.

How so?

See the details throughout this site.

And now on OPEB – Other Post-Employment Benefits.

The most recent example of their awfulness is the irrationality and vacuity by which Mon Schools expressed its decision to not join a lawsuit against the state which has moved to shove outrageous health care costs down the county’s throat, an aggressive and abusive move by the state – one made by appointees of the Governor – that likely doubles as an effort to strong-arm the county (and all the counties) into further subservience to whatever else the state dictates and has tried to dictate in the past.

Jim Bissett reports in the Dominion Post that the state Public Employees Insurance Agency is forcing each county in West Virginia to pay for the state mandated Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB), which would, Mon School Board President Parsons notes, “break the county” and all the other public schools in the state, forcing them into bankruptcy and state takeover or at best to severely strip the schools of resources, offerings, benefits, facilities. Yet the board voted not to join again with the other counties, in a lawsuit against the state, in appealing a court ruling against them on the matter.

“It would be [like] suing your mother,” board member Mike Kelly said absurdly. The mother who would “break” you? Read the rest of this entry »

LESTER LEMASTERS – MONONGALIA COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

Thomas Built Buses award:

Every day, all over the US and Canada, school bus drivers make a difference in the lives of children. So, in 2006, as a way to recognize those drivers, Thomas Built Buses established the “Children’s Choice School Bus Driver of the Year” essay contest.

The contest invites children across the North America to nominate their favorite school bus driver and thank them for their dedicated service. Now in its fifth year, the national essay contest has become a new Thomas Built tradition.

And the 2010 Children’s Choice Drivers of the Year are:

WINNER

DRIVER – LESTER LEMASTERS
NOMINATING CHILD – CHANCELLOR

Download entry
Read the rest of this entry »

MON SCHOOLS AND THE WV SBA FAIL TO INFORM THE PUBLIC THAT THE GREEN SCHOOL WOULD BE OVERCROWDED FROM THE START

On Mon Schools’ green school grant application to the WV School Building Authority (SBA Director Mark Manchin, the appointed cousin of SBA President Joe Manchin), under the section titled, “ADEQUATE SPACE FOR PROJECTED STUDENT ENROLLMENT,” Mon Schools states:

“There is adequate space for enrollment projections. Once this facility [green school] is completed [Fall 2012], redistricting will occur in the North and Cheat Lake Elementary areas due to overcrowding.”

First, as we have noted, contrary to the assertion above, which it takes an investigative research project to discover, Mon Schools continues to deny in public, either brazenly or ignorantly, that redistricting is “on the table” and connected to the green school.

Second, there is not “adequate space” in the Easton/Woodburn consolidated green school for the projected combined enrollments of Easton Elementary and Woodburn Elementary if the school is to be built for 450 students, which the grant is written for and which Mon Schools insists it “will be built to house.” Even before this fall’s boom in elementary school enrollment in Morgantown, the combined projected enrollment of Easton and Woodburn for 2012, the year the consolidated green school is to open, is 103 percent of green school capacity, with enrollment projected to climb nearly every year thereafter, again even before the recent enrollment boom, which was in all likelihood brought on by the ongoing hard economic times, as people flock to the city and fewer families can afford private school.

Mon Schools even includes the following chart in its summer request to the state Board of Education for two amendments to its Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan (one amendment to close Woodburn and Easton schools and the other amendment to build the new consolidated green school ostensibly for the Woodburn and Easton student bodies):

Read the rest of this entry »

MON SCHOOLS AND THE WV SBA HAVE KNOWN OF THE WRONGFUL NATURE OF THE SITE ALL ALONG

From Mon Schools’ green school grant application to the WV School Building Authority (SBA Director Mark Manchin, the appointed cousin of SBA President Joe Manchin):

“COMPLIANCE WITH SBA REQUIREMENTS, PROPOSED NEW PROJECT (GREEN ELEMENTARY): Briefly describe how this project affects the following:”

Mon Schools statement in part:

“If implemented, this project [new green elementary school] will provide students, faculty, and staff with a healthy, safe and pleasant environment in which to work and learn. … Also, in our existing facilities, it is not possible to have a healthy environment because of the lack of new outside air being injected into the facility. This project would allow for ventilation to all areas of the facility…”

In fact, what will be “injected” and “ventilated” throughout the building is the toxic and polluted air from the adjacent high traffic roads and congested intersection. That asthma-inducing brew will be “injected into the facility” and “ventilated to all areas” of it. Furthermore, increased and more severe attacks of asthma may be the least of the side effects.

That’s why California bans schools within 150 meters of high traffic roads. Presumably that’s why WV Department of Education Policy 6200 bans new schools from being sited near “arterial highways, heavily traveled streets, traffic and congestion,” as well as for traffic crash safety risk reasons.

When Mon Schools wrote and sent off the green school grant application that contains the statements above, it knew the two major congested highways were located along two sides of the site of course, very close and flanking (WV 705 & US 119), and that both highways were set to expand – which should have disqualified the school site in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

MON SCHOOLS PLEADS THE 5th

MON SCHOOLS & WVU SAY, TO INTERSECTION HELL WITH YOU!

The new “green” elementary school to be sited at the soon to be four or five lane intersection of WV 705 and US 119 should henceforth be known as Asinine Elementary, because:

• Asinine Elementary would be the first school in the county to sit at one of the most dangerous intersections for crashes, and it would be sited along the most crash-prone road (WV 705), and within its pollution belt. You can thank Mon Schools and WVU for working secretly and against the public to shove the school in there.
• Children with asthma will not be able to attend Asinine Elementary, that is, they should not attend. Recent research shows asthmatic children are at greater risk for more asthma attacks and attacks of greater severity when exposed to near-highway road pollution, such as the width of the highway pollution belt within which Asinine Elementary would be built. You can thank Mon Schools and WVU for working secretly and against the public to shove the school in there.
• Children without asthma are more likely to get asthma when exposed at length to near-highway road pollution. So if your child does not have asthma before entering Asinine Elementary but comes down with it sometime thereafter, you might wish to contact a lawyer to seek recompense for life-long damages or at least send the medical bills to Mon Schools, if not to WVU. You can thank Mon Schools and WVU for working secretly and against the public to shove the school in there. Read the rest of this entry »

WHY ARE CITIES, TOWNS, AND NEIGHBORHOODS ACROSS MONONGALIA COUNTY BEING GUTTED OF THEIR SCHOOLS?

In 1998, Monongalia County had 19 elementary schools. Since then, enrollment has climbed while the number of schools has been cut to 15 by  2005,  to 11 by 2010, to be 10 by 2012. And the changing situation is more extreme than even those figures show, because the two most recent elementary schools, built in 2006, were consolidations both built outside of any community or population center. One was built near an industrial park (that closed the school at least once due to fire and smoke) and the other was built on a strip mine become coal ash dump become treeless “park”. (The EPA this past year has considered classifying coal ash as hazardous waste.) Meanwhile, the 2012 consolidated elementary school (the “green” school) is slated to be built in another exceptionally unfit, strangely remote, community isolated, polluted and congested location. Additionally the new high school, which opened this past year, has a campus currently under investigation by the Department of Environmental Resources for multiple hazards, and is also remote from community. These are all large, isolated, and exceptionally poorly sited schools that make for an extreme dis-integrating of schools from community and from the general public. A terrible trend for many reasons, it should be stopped (in the case of the “green” school intended for the notorious intersection of WV 705 & US 119) and otherwise reversed.

Some similarities between Monongalia County and Washington DC? Excerpt below from:

“What’s Missing in the Talk About Education Reform” by Sam Smith

Unanswered in all the noise about “education reform” is why, over the past decade, America’s establishment has become so obsessed with controlling public education, a complete reversal of two centuries of American faith in locally controlled schools. Read the rest of this entry »

BUSING WITHOUT A CLUE

Yesterday, students at Woodburn Elementary did not get on a bus until an hour after the school day ended, due to the ongoing bus scheduling problems.

And the school day now ends at Woodburn Elementary 10 minutes later than it did at the start of the year, apparently to accommodate the failed bus scheduling.

If school ends 10 minutes later now, how can it be that it does not begin ten minutes later too? Will Woodburn students end the school year weeks before the other schools because they have put in more time? Or will they remain prisoner to lousy bus planning? Read the rest of this entry »

BRAY CARY HAS A FEW CHOICE WORDS FOR MON SCHOOLS’ FOIA PROPOSAL

“BAD”

“TRICKS”

“MISGUIDED”

“SOMETHING TO HIDE”

Read the rest of this entry »

TURNING CHILDREN GREEN WITH ILLNESS FROM TRAFFIC POLLUTION

It’s good to see children at Woodburn Elementary doing environmental science experiments with WVU students in Ms. Duley’s fourth-grade class, as reported in the Dominion Post today by Jim Bissett:

“Woodburn is slated to move into the Monongalia County school district’s first-ever green school during the next two years, and [Ms. Duley] wanted students thinking about the environment and what that means for their futures. …

“Their experiment with the Alka-Seltzer and sandwich bags brought it home for a class of kids in a small town with big-city gridlock during rush hour.

“The antacid tablet [WVU graduated student Jason] Burnside dissolved in a bag partially filled with water illustrated the effects of automobile emissions on the atmosphere.”

Unfortunately, in Monongalia County, when one thinks “green school” one thinks high traffic, congestion, and gridlock.

Other scientific experiments conducted outside the classroom by highly accomplished scientists show that children in schools and/or houses near high traffic and congestion (and the green school is intended to be sited at the high traffic and congested  intersection of WV 705 and US 119 on the Mileground) are exposed to the damaging effects of vehicle exhaust, which include increased rates and risk of asthma and cancer and heart and lung diseases, also harsher asthma attacks. Not only is a different green school site legally imperative, the science below shows why it is ethically imperative that the green school site be shifted away from the 705/119 intersection to a healthy and safe place.

“Diesel exhaust is especially dangerous, containing nearly 40 hazardous pollutants…. Diesel emissions increase the severity and duration of asthma attacks…. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children’s exposure to diesel exhaust particles should be decreased and that idling of diesel vehicles in places where children live and congregate should be minimized to protect their health… Read the rest of this entry »

MONONGALIA COUNTY SCHOOLS MAKES THE NATIONAL MEDIA IN DISGRACE

The Associated Press picked up on the Dominion Post article about Monongalia County Schools’ proposal to charge onerous and surely unlawful costs for Freedom Of Information Act requests. The AP story went national. All or part of it was run in newspapers from Texas to New York and beyond, and in the USA Today. Also in Charleston and all across West Virginia.

Note to Monongalia County Schools: You don’t mess with the Freedom Of Information Act.

Just as you should not break and abuse the other laws and policies that you continue to flout in trying to build a new green elementary school at an unhealthy, dangerous, and unlawful site: the intersection of WV 705 and US 119. Little children’s lungs and breathing, it is a scientific fact, cannot cope with traffic pollution to the extent that adults or even high school students can. The high traffic, noise, congestion, and pollution from WV 705, US 119, and their intersection makes that site for a school inappropriate, unlawful, and outrageous. No school should be sited at one of Morgantown’s most dangerous intersections for crashes, and on Morgantown’s by far most dangerous road for crashes, WV 705, a preposterous and ridiculous site for any school, especially a “green” school.

There is more than one national story here, far more, in the making and long since, as far as the eye can see.

The AP story: Read the rest of this entry »

MON SCHOOLS AND THE STATE TRY TO RUN AND HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT

Who released the WV Department of Education statement on the green school? When? Where? To whom? Why? Upon whose initiative? Read the rest of this entry »

SOUND FAMILIAR?

A school Superintendent was interviewing job applications for the position of manager of a large school system. He quickly devised a test for choosing the most suitable candidate. He simply asked each applicant this question, “What is two plus two?” Read the rest of this entry »