New Woodburn Community School

NEGLECTING THE CHILDREN AND THE PUBLIC

Marsh Fork Elementary, partially funded by the SBA, will be built with “sloped roofs” which “are another aspect of the plan that the School Building Authority will not fund” even though the local school “board finds [such roofs] imperative to the area’s climate.”

Furthermore, “the School Building Authority will only finance a 3,100 square foot gymnasium,” forcing the local school board which “wants to provide a gym the size of Fairdale’s” to “negotiate to make up the difference.”

So while the SBA won’t provide for the  needs and interests of the responsible local school board, the SBA will, by all that is wrong in education, enforce its own anti-educational, pro-dropout minimum class sizes. The WV SBA is the outrageous joke of the educational world.

The sooner the WV legislature reviews and corrects the anti-democracy and anti-educational effects of the SBA, maybe by abolishing it for something far better, the better off will be the students and the public.

Meanwhile in Morgantown the SBA is totally negligent in approving a dangerous, scandalously expensive, vehicle-exhaust-polluted and health damaging site for the new “Eastwood” “green” elementary school. A school that destroys nine acres of urban farmland and that both endangers and damages children’s health at exorbitant cost to the public is the furthest thing from responsible, let along environmentally or health conscious.

Such a school siting is not only remarkably stupid, it’s grossly negligent – not exactly what the public, or what the WV legislature, one assumes, desires in state agencies. The WV School Building Authority is a menace to society, anti-educational in effect, and unresponsive to the public.

The SBA facilitates some of the worst elements in education today, while providing cover for the negligent and otherwise irresponsible actions of incompetent local administrators, who are facilitated by self-congratulatory, know-nothing, bullheaded and blind local school boards.

The SBA and the inept contemptuous officials: keeping the pupils and the public down. It’s quite a sight, quite a site.

Why again does the Monongalia County School Board refuse to televise its meetings like the Morgantown City Council does? Why, as of last Tuesday, does Mon Schools now charge 35 cents per electronic page of a Freedom of Information Act request?

Incompetent and scandalous school boards operate best in secrecy, semi-secrecy, and, if at all possible, sheer invisibility from the public.

Mon Schools is now moving toward renovating its school board meeting room. Current plans call for the room to be changed so that the board members will sit up on an elevated platform, possibly because the board is currently being sued to have its meetings televised live and on tape delay and suddenly the members wish to appear impressive. Or at least not blazingly pathetic and inept.

Remember the Woodburn closure hearing, where the school board and superintendent sat up on a stage, and the public was forced to address the officials at crotch level?

The couple dozen members of the public who spoke one by one where forced to juggle a microphone with any notes, with no place to set notes. While the officials sat on high and looked down. And all the officials but one refused to speak, such was their willingness to engage the public. The board seems incapable of dialogue, fearful of it, and thoroughly intransigent.

Now they intend to ramp themselves up in the public board room, new cabinets, new desks, new lights, new this, new that, but any additional seating for the public? any additional access for the public via TV or even internet or radio broadcast? No: none mentioned at the recent board meeting where the plans were revealed.

Mon Schools officials: incorrigible and proud. Ever proving that four years between board elections is far, far too long. And that a mere five members on the school board is far too few.

At this scandalous point, every single school or every two schools in the district should elect a member of the public to serve a two year term. (Thanks to Woodburn Elementary crossing guard for that powerful idea.)  Otherwise there is precious little chance for responsiveness, let alone responsibility, by the officials to the public and to the basic needs of the pupils.

Time for change in Monongalia County Schools, long since.