THE SITE IS NOT WORTH A SINGLE DOLLAR NOR A SINGLE LIFE FOR A SCHOOL
Top sports writer Dan Wetzel and attorney Clay Travis discuss the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, including Penn State’s
“civil liability, and that of individuals such as [President] Spanier, [Head Coach] Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley and others.”
Attorney Travis
“estimates the total liability will be more than $100 million and that’s if Penn State can avoid any punitive measures, which could drive things higher. Paterno himself could pay out millions.”
Sports law professor Michael McCann analyzes the Penn State scandal liabilities further.
And United States Education Secretary Arne Duncan states the underlying imperative: “Schools and school officials have a legal and moral responsibility to protect children and young people from violence and abuse.”
Now compare to the Eastwood Mileground siting scandal and the West Virginia state Rule that mandates:
“For the safety of students, [any and every] new school site shall be located away from hazards and undesirable environments, such as: a. … arterial highways, heavily traveled streets, traffic and congestion b. Noise, toxic gas escapes from … odoriferous plants or industries … e. … bulk storage plants for flammable liquid, and property zoned as industrial f. Situations where a combination of factors such as those presented above could contribute to the possibility of human entrapment…”
The intended Eastwood Mileground site is an egregious mass violation of multiple site prohibiting provisions above. The site is a dangerous, potentially lethal, even predictably lethal mass of insoluble violations.
If the Eastwood Mileground school siting proceeds, and if a severe or deadly calamity to a student occurs in the prohibited features at and around the new school site, then punitive and civil liability damages should be imposed against the top Monongalia County School Officials and the top WV School Building Authority officials, along with multi-million dollar civil liability damages against the various educational agencies.
The unusually dangerous features at and around the Eastwood Mileground school site are prohibited by state Rule for a reason. One does not have to be a prophet to predict potential disaster or likely disaster on and around those deadly highways.
The officials and agencies involved do not have the right, moral or legal, to roll loaded dice with children’s lives.
A lot like in the Penn State child sex scandal there is a culture of looking the other way among the education officials and agencies in West Virginia, as regards new school siting. It’s dangerous. It’s potentially lethal. It’s wrong. And given an essentially predicatable calamity, it’s criminal.
The West Virginia Supreme Court must intervene decisively.
Eastwood Mileground Site In A Zone of Death
DEATH ZONE SCHOOL SITE
The horrific calamity, April 20th, 2011, a traffic fatality with multiple injuries and hospitalizations at the near-Eastwood-site intersection of Route 705 and Stewartstown Road shows why siting schools at high traffic, congested, and arterial highways is prohibited in West Virginia, and why the Eastwood Mileground intersection site, just up the road at another dangerous intersection, is such a menacing and flagrant violation.
Superintendent Devono’s repugnant primary plan, described recently on WAJR, is to send your children through that fatal intersection every day, even though your children don’t live anywhere near that intersection or any part of Route 705.
The Dominion Post reports:
“Monongalia County Sheriff Al Kisner has firsthand experience…. He said he was once hit from behind while at 705 and Stewartstown road. He was waiting for the traffic light to change. When it did, the car behind him hit his vehicle before he started moving.
Mon Schools in complete negligence is going full throttle in siting a school on the most dangerous highway in the entire region, even though not a single student in the Eastwood catchment lives on or near that highway, that deathway, Route 705.
“433 wrecks, 30 weeks, 8 sites” – first 30 weeks of 2010:
Except for the very few children who live on or just off the Mileground, not a single child who attends Easton or Woodburn Elementary would have to ever risk the traffic dangers and pollution damages of either the Mileground road or Route 705 if not for the horrible arterial intersection Eastwood school site.
But because Mon Schools, with SBA approval, in all its flagrant disregard for the health and safety and well-being of the schoolchildren of Easton and Woodburn is trying to site the combined Eastwood school at the intersection of Route 705 and the Mileground (US 119), several hundred young children, ages 3 to 11, will be exposed to the dangers and damages of those highways, their intersection, and the air-polluted school site every single school day, at least twice per day…4 times per day if they go out and come back for a field trip…6 times per day if they return after school for a play, a practice, a meeting, or other event. That’s about a quarter million exposures per school year, of young children to terrible Mon-Schools-imposed dangers and damages.
A school sited on the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds would never expose the schoolchildren to Route 705 or to the 705/Mileground intersection. Never. Not even for students attending from the direction of Easton.
And if a second school were built for the students of Easton, perhaps on land the school district already owns at the UHS site or elsewhere in the Easton catchment, then a couple more congested intersections would be removed from many young children’s daily lives.
But Mon Schools, along with the SBA, by pushing relentlessly for the Eastwood Mileground site has shown itself to be entirely determined to, at best, risk your children’s lives in that zone of death on those deadly roads, at those deadly intersections. And Mon Schools is doing so at appalling expense, paying top commercial rates for the substandard sewage dump that is the underminedMileground menace of a site.
New Woodburn Community School 
Leave a Reply