New Woodburn Community School

SUMMARY ARTICLE IN THE PAPERS

AP FEATURED NEWS / Tuesday May 10, 2011 / Green school back in court

ON WITH THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE

Below is some of the information from the “Notice of Hearing” from Judge James Stucky’s office.

The Plaintiff has requested a Temporary Restraining Order against Monongaila County Schools’ development of the Eastwood Elementary Mileground site:

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF KANAWHA COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

CIVIL ACTION NO. 11-C-581
JUDGE JAMES C. STUCKY

TONY CHRISTINI,

Plaintiff,

v.

BOARD OF EDUCATION OF WEST VIRGINIA,
WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOL BUILDING AUTHORITY,
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF MONONGALIA COUNTY,
AND FRANK DEVONO, Superintendent of Monongalia County Board,

Defendants.

 NOTICE OF HEARING

Notice is hereby given that a hearing on a Motion For Temporary Restraining Order in the above-styled action is scheduled for [Friday] May 20, 2011 at 3:00 p.m. before the Honorable James C. Stucky, Judge of the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Kanawha County Judicial Annex, 111 Court Street, 6th Floor, Courtroom 6-E, Charleston, West Virginia.

MAP to the court building, parking garage attached, and next to Charleston Town Centre Mall

Read the rest of this entry »

DEATH ZONE SCHOOL SITE

The horrific calamity of last week’s April 20th traffic fatality and multiple injuries and hospitalizations at the intersection of Route 705 and Stewartstown Road show why siting schools at high traffic, congested, and/or 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 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. Read the rest of this entry »

POURING YOUR CHILDREN’S EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES DOWN THE MINES

Parents at Woodburn Elementary and other schools scramble to raise some funds for their children’s futher educational opportunities and meanwhile the Monongalia County Board of Education burns through cash like it was the best fuel available.

Take a look at the $650,000 figure to be spent on grouting beneath Eastwood Elementary at the Mileground site. No one knows if the cost will cap out there. Might go a lot higher. But regardless, now, add $400,000 in additional grouting expense needed to stabilize the geothermal field that will be used to heat the school (reported in the Dominion Post today).

Now the projected mine mitigation cost for Eastwood on the Mileground is over a million dollars, nearly the projected mine mitigation costs of University High which was badly underestimated, since the final cost came in just shy of two million dollars. Is that what Eastwood will cost to mine mitigate? Two million dollars? More than one million is already bad enough. That’s all the candy and cookie fundraisers put together for the past many decades.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of bullshit expense at a menacing site. Or, we should say, human shit expense, because as far as is known, the Mileground trailer park dumps its sewage directly into the mines beneath the schoolgrounds and always has.

Question of the day sent in from a concerned citizen: Does grout set up in shit?

Apparently so. Because certain officials’ brains seemed to have been cemented into immobility a long time ago.

Meanwhile, your children’s educational opportunities are lost to the sewage of the mines. Read the rest of this entry »

CRASHES AND CHEMICAL SPILLS IN COMMUTER CORRIDORS AT SCHOOL RELEASE HOURS

The Dominion Post reports today that at 3:26 pm yesterday, when Monongalia County schools were letting out, a wreck forced the closure of the Mileground Road.

A few minutes earlier a truck overturned on I-79 spilling a chemical. That and other kinds of trucks carrying hazardous materials could likely be using the Mileground Road frequently when it is expanded to 4 lanes in a few years, if the trucks aren’t already. And more big trucks will be using the Eastwood 705/119 Mileground intersection if the two new truck and commuter routes are added to that vortex as currently prioritized by the Greater Morgantown MPO: the Falling Run Corridor and the Inner Loop Connector. Then there is the impending opening of the nearby industrial park by the airport. There is also the impending opening of the Mon-Fayette expressway, which originates (or ends) near the area.

And Scheetz has schematically designed a gas station to go in at the armory, right next to the would-be Eastwood school building. Sheetz has even asked Mon Schools to allow its gas station customers to share the school drive. Gas stations are toxic and dangerous every hour of every day of every week. This would be the fourth gas station on the Mileground within a few hundred meters of the Eastwood site. And WVU intends to build a hydrogen bus fueling station a few hundred meters from the school site as well, on the Morgantown end of the Mileground.

You see, that is what happens in major commuter corridors and especially in unstable commercial and industrial areas: major commercial and industrial development, major traffic accidents, chemical spills, and other threatening growth and “incidents.”

And that is why mandates forbid the building of new schools in West Virginia near such hazards. Because it’s not safe. It is especially not safe for hundreds of children 3 to 11 years old massed together at one intersection at the nexus of all these hazards: the Eastwood Mileground site.

Somehow Superintendent Frank Devono and the five members of the Mon Schools board don’t understand that: President Barbara Parsons, Vice President Joe Statler, Mike Kelly, Clarence Harvey, and Nancy Walker. They don’t get the dangers. They don’t respect the mandates. And they thereby are failing to care for the children. They think the Eastwood Mileground site is the best school site available. Here they are:

Is it not long since time that they all volunteered to work HazMat patrol on the Mileground around Eastwood Elementary? Or maybe the school uniform for the students could be a HazMat suit. Hundreds of bright yellow little HazMat suits. HazMat Elementary.

Read the rest of this entry »

CRAZY CIRCLE TO WOODBURN AREA FROM THE EASTWOOD SITE ON THE MILEGROUND

According to Superintendent Frank Devono, on WAJR yesterday, you would have to drive, your children would have to ride, through the catchments of two other elementary schools to return to the Woodburn area, even though the Eastwood Mileground site sits in (barely, if that) the Woodburn catchment and is only a half mile from Woodburn. You would have to drive and your children would have to ride several miles in a big roundabout loop through North Elementary’s catchment. How is that for negligent? Why don’t they just rename the school North II, the more negligent model. That crazy circle home for Woodburn area children was the best the Superintendent could offer on the radio yesterday. Mon Schools has not asked for a traffic light to be put on WV 705, thus, only right turns onto WV 705 is Mon Schools’ operative thinking.

[An official with WV Division of Highways is on record remarking that, in regard to potential school and gas station siting, “it’s safe to say that no one from the District or DT is going to be accepting of the idea to install a signal anywhere near this intersection” which would be needed on WV 705 to allow school traffic to make a left turn to be able to return to Woodburn area. (see DOH correspondence below)]

Of course, nothing is finalized yet, so maybe your children will have to fly to the moon each day, too, before they can return to the Woodburn area. When it comes to Mon Schools and the Eastwood Mileground site, nothing should surprise anyone.

Hey Dave.  We wanted to give you a quick heads up regarding some upcoming issues in Mon Co.  Last week, Mr. Terry Astleford, a real estate developer representing Sheetz stopped in to the District to go over a few sites they are looking at in Mon Co.  One location in particular, at the NE corner of WV 705 and the Mileground (US 119) presents numerous concerns.  In addition to the Sheetz, apparently a new Elementary School is also being considered further back on the same corner.

As you know, getting traffic into and out of Morgantown is a never ending struggle and keeping traffic moving at this intersection is critical.  Ultimately, we would like to have 2 lanes continuous to I-68 and a few different alternatives, I understand, are being considered to accomplish this.  At least one of these involves adding a lane to the Mileground.

I don’t see how we could allow left turns onto either side of this corner without a signal.  And its safe to say that no one from the District or DT is going to be accepting of the idea to install a signal anywhere near this intersection. Perhaps the school would propose to construct an entrance a good distance away from the corner itself on WV 705, but I don’t know.  Mr. Astleford was representing the interests of Sheetz primarily so of course he is concerned with the corner itself.

Anyway, you may already be aware of discussions regarding the school, but as of yet, we haven’t seen anything official at the District.  Since we assume its still very early in the planning stages, we just wanted to let you know of our concerns so you could have them in mind.

Thanks.

Mike

Michael Davis

WV Division of Highways

District Four

(304) 842-1597

David E. Cramer, PE

WV Department of Transportation

Commissioner’s Office of Economic Development

1900 Kanawha Boulevard, East

Building 5, Room 129

Charleston, West Virginia  25305

304.558.9211

304.558.1004 (fax)

David.E.Cramer@wv.gov

FOIA release (below) from WVU showing Sheetz’ early interest in a dual school/gas station drive, at the corner WVU parcel (above). After WV DOH planned to put the 705/119 intersection on that corner WVU parcel, Sheetz shifted its interest and plans to the armory site. However, this still leaves a dual access possible from the intersection: school/gas station access,  ”a combined entrance” (see below). Why would Sheetz not want that direct access from the intersection to an armory gas station? In fact Sheetz would need such access to allow traffic from both sides of the impending divided highway to reach a gas station at the armory site.

See, below, part of our Freedom of Information Act request of the WV Division of Highways.

This FOIA release shows Sheetz’ most recent interest in the armory site bordering the school grounds very close to the would-be school building:

From: ”Cramer, David E” <David.E.Cramer@wv.gov>
To: ”Davis, Michael R” <Michael.R.Davis@wv.gov>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:41:22 -0400
Subject: RE: Another Sheetz Request

FIGURING THE REAL COSTS OF THE SCANDAL & DISASTER THAT WOULD BE EASTWOOD ELEMENTARY ON THE MILEGROUND

_______________________________

COST OF THE FIASCO:

MON SCHOOLS’ ARCHITECT-ESTIMATED PARTIAL COSTS (TABLES 1 & 2 – bottom):  $15,196,594

[Update: On April 15, 2012, the Dominion Post reported that Mon Schools’ architect upped the estimated cost of Eastwood by $2.5 million to $17.6 million, which we had long since anticipated and explained. Add in the approximately $4 million in land acquisition and other costs, and the overall cost of Eastwood surpasses $21,000,000, which again we have long since estimated (see below), and which is a cost far, far higher than has ever been previously admitted or in any way put forth as even a possibility by the officials. And again, for reasons we have long since explained, the total costs could go far, far higher, if they haven’t already.]

TOTAL ESTIMATED COSTS, INCLUDING LAND COSTS: ~$21,000,000 +

_______________________________

TABLES 1 & 2 COSTS DO NOT INCLUDE “OTHER COSTS” (ESTIMATED):

1. PURCHASE OF WVU PARCEL (8.85 ACRES): ~$2,900,000
2. PURCHASE OF THE MOBILE HOME PARK PARCEL (~2.5 ACRES):  ???~$800,000
3. REMEDIATION OF THE MOBILE HOME PARK (SURFACE)  ???~$200,000
4. REMEDIATION OF THE MOBILE HOME PARK (MINE-MITIGATION)  ???~$200,000
5. THE SCHEMATICALLY DESIGNED “FINAL” PART OF THE FULL-SIZED SCHOOL (DETAILED BELOW AS “ALTERNATE SPACES”), WHICH WOULD TAKE THE STUDENT SEATING CAPACITY OF EASTWOOD FROM 450 TO 550 AND THE SQUARE FEET OF THE SCHOOL FROM 66,416 TO 70,973:  ???~$2,000,000
6. OTHER ARCHAEOLOGICAL, GEOPHYSICAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS (POST FEB. 2):  ???~$200,000
7. MISCELLANEOUS (PRESENT & FUTURE NEGLIGENCE OR LIABILITY LAWSUITS, EXTRA POLLUTION CONTROL MEASURES, EXTRA SAFETY MEASURES, ETC.):  ???~$100,000 TO ~$10,000,000 OR MORE
8. UNKNOWN:  ???

OTHER COSTS, TOTAL:  ~$6,200,000 OR ???

TOTAL COSTS, EASTWOOD MILEGROUND SITE & BUILDING:  ~$21,000,000 + ???

Total costs above are a rough estimate based on limited information. Mon Schools should feel free to add detailed input on these costs estimates, at any time. What a good public service that would be.

[Update: As more data continues to come out, our estimates have proven to be right on target. The Eastwood Elementary project is on track to cost about $21 million. The Board expects to have “full and cleared title” to the entire site by July 15, 2011. Soon to be released construction bids will tell us more.]

The approximate $21 million expense for a new school terribly located raises several giant questions: Read the rest of this entry »

DEVONO THREATENS TO SEND WOODBURN CHILDREN MOST OF THE WAY TO PENNSYLVANIA

Superintendent Frank Devono is going way beyond the bounds. It was on WAJR quite a few months ago that Mon Schools Superintendent Frank Devono first threatened that he could have put the new “Eastwood” Elementary miles outside of Morgantown at the new University High School (UHS) site. He renewed that threat in a meeting with the Dominion Post this past week, reported in today’s article, “Date for levy vote uncertain“:

“We can take the same school [Eastwood] and put it up at University [High, on Baker’s Ridge Road],” he said.

Recall: this (new) UHS site is NOT one of the 19 sites that Mon Schools investigated and considered via their hired architect, who presented on the 19 investigated sites at Mon Schools’ board meetings over a period of months, March-June, 2010 (see map, bottom).

The architect’s final evaluation of sites consisted of three sites: the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds, the area near old UHS/new Mountaineer Middle, and a mystery location (the exact 705/119 intersection location on the Mileground that Mon Schools refused to disclose at the time).

The new UHS site was never considered, to the public’s knowledge, in the architect’s site selection process. Never.

In fact, the UHS site is 2 miles distant from any of the other 19 sites considered. The 19 architect-investigated sites are all within 2.5 miles of one another, at most. But the UHS site is 2 miles from the nearest of the 19 sites, and about 4.5 miles from the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds (see map, second from bottom). The UHS site is Devono’s threatened alternate site.

The superintendent threatens to send Woodburn Elementary students most of the way to Pennsylvania, beyond the bounds of all the other Morgantown area elementary schools:

Pictured above, as blue dots, are the Morgantown Area elementary schools. From left to right along the top line: Mylan Park, Suncrest, North, Easton (black dot on blue), Cheat Lake; from left to right along the bottom line: Skyview, Mountainview, Brookhaven. The center black dot encircled is Woodburn Elementary. The top black dot encircled, most of the way to Pennsylvania, is the new UHS site, which the superintendent threatens as the Eastwood alternate site. This brilliant idea would send the innermost city schoolchildren to the outermost Morgantown area school.

Devono has latched upon the UHS site as being the one alternate to the Eastwood Mileground site ever since the beginning of the lawsuit against Devono and the Mileground site. Now he has repeatedly raised this site, never considered publicly by the architect, as the one alternate to Eastwood.

“We can take the same school [Eastwood] and put it up at University [High, on Bakers Ridge Road],” he said. “But then it really loses the community feel.”

One wonders: What sort of “community feel” does the new high school have out there, after being removed from the city? It’s practically in another state. Not to mention that the intended location of the consolidated Eastwood Elementary immediately at a major commuter corridor intersection in a largely commercial district where virtually no one can walk to has exactly zero “community feel” also. (What idiocy. A commuter corridor intersection site for a consolidated elementary school has a sheer idiocy feel. No surprise then that the local communities large and small have actively and vehemently opposed the site.) Devono adds:

“I challenge you to find me a better site than the one we have [on the Mileground].”

Is Superintendent Frank Devono deaf and blind? Or did he sleep through the presentation of the Woodburn school model, made by architects with school design experience? A Woodburn resident demonstrated the model in a school board meeting presentation, which made clear how a school could be built on the Woodburn schoolgrounds.

The existing Woodburn schoolgrounds site was one of the final three sites in the full “Site Selection Evaluation for the SBA Green Elementary School for the Monongalia County Board of Education and the School Building Authority of West Virginia.” Devono’s threatened site did not even make the top 19. It wasn’t considered at all. Why does superintendent Devono continue to speak in such an arbitrary and capricious manner in regard to siting? Maybe we will need another lawsuit to find out.

The broad community consensus all along, which the superintendent and board have never even acknowledged, let alone tried to work to implement, is to build TWO modest-sized schools to replace Easton Elementary and Woodburn Elementary. Mon Schools could do so very efficiently and properly by building one on the existing Woodburn school grounds, and by building another on the UHS site (or some other suitable site), which would well serve the Easton catchment. The silence from Mon Schools on this most appropriate option is deafening, as it has been for many months.

THE GREAT BENEFIT OF A NEW SCHOOL ON THE MILEGROUND

WV Division of Highways’ consultant on the Mileground expansion, ENTRAN, shows what a new school, Eastwood, would do to traffic on the Mileground during the years prior to the Mileground expansion, dropping Mileground outbound traffic speed in the afternoon from an optimistically figured 14 mph to 8 mph:

ENTRAN reports in “Mileground Road Traffic: Final Report,” February 2011 (bold and italics added):

Several analysis scenarios were created for the purpose of evaluating and comparing the Mileground Corridor alternatives. Two critical time periods on a “typical” day were compared – the average weekday morning and afternoon peak periods or “rush hours.” On Mileground Road, these periods typically occur from 7:00 A.M. until about 9:00 A.M. and from around 2:30P.M. until about 6:00 P.M. Although there are other times (noon, for example) when Mileground Road traffic conditions are congested, these morning and afternoon peaks represent a regularly occurring worst case. Traffic counts for the base year models were collected during the summer of 2010, but these counts were multiplied by an adjustment factor derived from historical data to account for traffic conditions when local schools and WVU are in session.

In other words, the ENTRAN report merely notes the common knowledge of the extraordinary multiple extended congested rush hours on the Mileground. Otherwise, the report can only hypothetically account for the actual traffic count because the actual observational study was done when the schools and universities were not remotely in full session. Maybe that’s why the average speed of 14 miles per hour is so optimistically high. It’s not based on actual observation of the most common conditions.

Notice too that the ENTRAN report says nothing about the virtual gridlock in the half mile between the 705/119 intersection and Woodburn, where Charles and Hampton intersect with 119. ENTRAN was not commissioned to study that section of road, because WV DOH has no known plans to do anything about it.

By WV state law, Mon Schools is bound to WV Policy 6200 (202.06), which prohibits new school sites not “located away from” – among other egregious violations in the immediate area – “congestion.”

Aside from the unlawfulness of the situation, including the health and safety damage and threat to children, what kind of idiocy is involved in siting a school that is monstrously entrapped by congestion for 6 hours or more on a regular day? Does Mon Schools’ Superintendent Frank Devono get paid a huge bonus to waste public funds and waste public facilities like that? Beside being an unlawful reckless menace of a site, it’s profoundly stupid. A stupid waste.

A rush hour forced 6:30 a.m. school start time would have children eating school breakfast in the dark and “lunch” during mid-morning. Meanwhile, accessing the school during the school day or after “regular” school hours, for all types of events, or snow delays, and so on, would be prohibitive…or, at the least, a great waste of time, and harmful to health, especially to the health of the children, ages 3 to 11 in this pre-K through 5th grade facility, the would-be Eastwood Elementary.

Eastwood Elementary on the Mileground: signed, sealed, and still trying to be delivered by Mon Schools Board, consisting of President Barbara Parsons, Vice President Joe Statler, Mike Kelly, Clarence Harvey, and Nancy Walker. Remember those names. Don’t ever vote for them again, if you ever did before.

Oh, and, thanks, WVU administration, for ruthlessly profiting off this debacle and calamity in the making. Good thing (one hopes) that you are starting up that program in Public Health. Maybe you can start making restitution there.

Read the rest of this entry »

15 MPH SCHOOL ZONE! AT MILEGROUND RACETRACK CENTRAL?

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

YET ANOTHER NEGLIGENT LOCAL BOARD AND SBA SCHOOL SITING

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 »

JARED GORBY’S NEW DESIGNS

See newest designs in his Woodburn Presentation:

See previous details at his blog for a new school on the Woodburn school grounds:

Read the rest of this entry »

AN IDEAL FIT

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 »

A GAS STATION DOES NOT A GREEN SCHOOL MAKE

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 »

MONONGALIA COUNTY SCHOOL CHILDREN POISED TO REAP THE TOXIC FUMES OF NEGLIGENT SITING IN MORGANTOWN WEST VIRGINIA

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.

Discovery News:

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

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 »

SOME DISASTERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Read the rest of this entry »

IDIOTIC AND INDEFENSIBLE SCHOOL SITING

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 PUBLIC

Far 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.

WON LAST YEAR BY LESTER LEMASTERS AND CHANCELLOR

Last year’s award.

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 »

FEBRUARY 28 MINUTES, MARCH 28 NEXT MEETING

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 »

BUILDING ONE LOUSY SCHOOL INSTEAD OF TWO GOOD SCHOOLS

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 »

BOE ENSURING THE EVICTION OF THE CHILDREN THEY HAD PROCLAIMED WOULD WALK TO THE NEW SCHOOL

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 »

ILLOGIC AND SLEIGHT OF HAND – WATCH OUT

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.

IT ONLY MAKES SENSE, THIS NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

MON SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING OFFLINE AGAIN TONIGHT

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, THE SBA, AND THE BLEEDING GREEN SCHOOL

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 »

AND THEY WONDER WHY ANYONE OBJECTS

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.

TERRACE ELEMENTARY

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 »

GRUB STUBS

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.

FEBRUARY MEETING

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.

REVITALIZING THE OLD AND PROVIDING FOR THE NEW

Those who wish to maintain the tradition of the century old school building in Woodburn, while maintaining a school in Woodburn and providing for the needs of today and the future by building the new, should pay serious attention to the work of Jared Gorby. And they should tangibly support his efforts. His community school design is the best way to maintain tradition while also moving forward. In fact, incorporating tradition within progress is the only way to maintain strong and lively traditions. Otherwise, tradition essentially dies.

It still seems that the bulk of the new green school should be on the sidehill – that ground cannot be wasted – even if the reconfigured, revitalized original building is refashioned up top. All the additions, post-original-structure, should be knocked off to clear flat playground space up top, unless additional adjacent land is acquired.

Counting the basement which currently contains multiple offices, a classroom, and the lunchroom, the old Woodburn school is essentially a 3 story structure. The sidehill could be pulled away from the basement so that the basement is transformed into part of a first floor.

Incorporate those three stories to one or two (sub but ground level) stories stretched across the sidehill below, including shared spaces such as a gymnasium and lunchroom, and you’ve got a unique and highly functional four or five story building with no part of the building standing more than two stories off the ground. More-or-less a primary school on the sidehill and an elementary school above (pre-k through first, second through fifth).

Some land grading would be required but that is required at every site, and in any case this site has been previously heavily graded. In fact, given this design, some of the original grade could be (would need to be) restored.

Sound complicated? Too complicated? Possibly. But nothing that award winning designers couldn’t figure out. The designers of this school should win awards, from the local communities and beyond.

What about it, people of Morgantown with an interest in history and preservation? Time to step up with your wallets and purses and help it get done. See Gorby’s current and potential designs, how he puts the old in the new, and thereby adds dignity, grace, and utility to both.

Read the rest of this entry »

FROM THE COMMENTS

The reason the Administration requests input from teachers is not to get any input — it is to say they can go to the public and say they did it… When they were building UHS, they requested comments and concerns – the building was built and the majority of the comments were never used—Teachers were told that it was too late to add comments and they were already told by Central Administration not to look at these comments – This is why there are so many problems with UHS – no heat in winter (still has not been fixed in two wings of the building, no air in spring, no outlets in the business computer rooms, no shut off valves in the science rooms….etc… all were mentioned as teacher concerns…

Oh, if the teachers could tell stories, or would, what stories would the teachers tell…

Mon Schools administration and the school board aren’t worthy of the teachers. That is as plain as day.

Put any group of teachers in the same room with the administration and the school board and it’s obvious.

Maybe that is why the administration and school board continue to refuse to broadcast or podcast the board meetings.

They had better do so soon, or that court order will be coming.

Image Source: Alec Couros. Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Canada. Creative Commons.

THE TEACHERS SHOULD LEAD THE SCHOOLS, NOT THE MANAGERS

Why do the planners and Mon Schools administrators ask for teachers’ input on how Eastwood should be designed and then don’t listen to them? Why should teachers waste their time going to those meetings? Why when teachers prefer the lockers be IN the rooms does the architect locate them outside in the hall? Teachers ask for tables instead of desks, but those calling the shots don’t want that. What’s the point of going through the process if the decisions are already made? Why aren’t the teachers in charge of creating the best teaching and learning design for their classrooms? They practically live in that space. They know it best. They should be free to organize it accordingly.

No surprise: In a recent study on graduation rates only half of the local school respondents ” ‘agreed or strongly agreed that their opinions are respected’ in their respective school [in Mon Schools] – compared to 65 percent nationally who answered the same way.”

The teachers should have far more authority for running the schools as compared to the administrators. That’s crucial for making big steps toward providing a “thorough and efficient system of free schools” as mandated by the Constitution of West Virginia.

Time to move to teacher-run schools.

BOE DESCENDS TO THE SEWAGE OF THE MINES

It has very recently come to our attention that the Eastwood school grounds are to include an additional 2.5 acres of a portion of an adjacent trailer park with 20 trailers on it, as yet to be purchased.

This is an intended acquisition of Eastwood school grounds that has never been publicly discussed, to our knowledge, let alone approved by any agency. We discovered this information subsequent to inspecting the Mon Schools link to the Eastwood architects’ website (Williamson Shriver), wherein one finds a “Report of Geophysical Study” by Triad Engineering claiming that the trailer park portion already “has been purchased [by Mon Schools] to accommodate the scope of the [Eastwood] project.” It has not been purchased. Further, the Eastwood architect (Williamson Shriver) notes in the February “Design Development Educational Specification” that the Eastwood site “tract” consists of 11.3 acres, well above the 8.85 acres purchased from WVU and previously known to the public. Thus, Mon Schools continues to operate very quietly with minimal public awareness, let alone involvement, and continues schematically designing part of the State SBA-funded facility on land that Mon Schools does not own. The Petitioner knows of no documentation expressing intent to either sell or purchase the extra acreage, and yet the schematic design wholly encompasses it (see below). Again, such procedure is forbidden by State SBA contract, Section 8.

More expense upon more expense: the Eastwood site design shows a parking lot, a school drive, and a “play field” superimposed over the current trailer park section, and the architect has spoken repeatedly of putting the geothermal well pipes for the school building under the playground. Triad Engineering states that this ground too will need to be mine-mitigated, though no bore samples were taken of this portion, unlike on the purchased site. To our knowledge, Mon Schools and Triad have not adjusted (up) for public knowledge the cost of mine mitigating this extra portion of land containing the geothermal well. [UPDATE: THE ACTUAL COST OF THE NEW SCHOOL PROJECT NOW LOOKS TO BE ABOUT $21 MILLION.]

Additional violation: no archaeological study has been done of this additional land, or even of all the previously acquired Eastwood land. The archaeological study that was undertaken encompassed only “7.16” acres, rather than the 8.85 acres of the purchased site, let alone the 11.3 acres of the schematically designed site. While, according to the archaeological study, “Systematic survey did not discover evidence of archaeological sites or historic structures or buildings within the boundaries of the project area” the study adds that “Areas outside the direct area of potential effect were not examined for sites or other types of cultural resources.” This neglected area of study includes the entire 2.5 acres of the trailer park yet to be purchased, and 1.7 acres of the purchased portion of the school grounds.

Of further concern is that, apparently, as far as is known, the septic “system” for the trailer park is the mine void a scant few dozen feet below the trailer park and the school grounds both. So it is that apparently part, perhaps a large part, of the Eastwood school grounds contains a sewage dump. No explanation has been given, to the extent that it can ever be known, where that sewage would go when the mines get filled to provide support for the building and geothermal pipes. Will the sewage ooze out onto the backside of the school grounds (where the proposed nature trail would be), school grounds that slope down to and below the level of the mines and the mine portals? Triad Engineering reports:

“…a 5 foot by 12 foot by 6 foot septic tank was installed on the Site Property (trailer park portion) in 1949. The location of the septic system is unknown. A 10,800 gallon concrete septic tank with filter system was installed on the southern portion of the Site Property; however, it is unknown when this septic system was installed. The septic systems may be connected to an underground mine located approximately 10 to 30 feet below the ground surface.”

Triad Engineering shows that the mines all interconnect (figure A-2) (see below) under virtually the entire Eastwood grounds. Once the mine voids are filled, the water and sewage displaced, would any nature trail then traverse a sewage seep? What test has yet been conducted for sewage seep? Apparently the new school would be heated and cooled by the temperature of the trailer park sewage radiating through the geothermal pipes into the classrooms. Now that’s what we call brownfield development!

Former Mon Schools President Nancy Walker had said that a new school at the 705/119 intersection site would allow the children from the trailer park to walk to school, as was repeatedly reported, but now well over half, about two thirds, of those trailers are going to be entirely displaced, so that ever fewer if any children at all would be able to walk to the brand new school on the sewage dump.

Read the rest of this entry »

???

MON SCHOOLS & BIG MONEY TO REFURBISH FOOTBALL FIELD INSTEAD OF BUILDING NEEDED SCHOOLS

Monongalia County Schools will spend $2 million to refurbish its downtown high school football stadium, which will be matched by $2 million from the Hazel Ruby McQuain Trust. Theoretically, private donations will add another $2 million more.

The neglect and abuse by Mon Schools is so bad that it claims not to be able to replace an 86 year old elementary school (Easton) and a 101 year old elementary school (Woodburn), but pleads poverty in being forced to combine them.

• And then out pops this $6 million football field project.
• And out pops a scandalous approximately $3 million dollar purchase price for the new school land that is undermined and must be mine-filled to the tune of at least $650,000, and that is otherwise negligently located.
• And out pops the fact that Mon Schools is planning to build this new green school for a planned $15.2 million dollars with a 450 student capacity (not counting the $3 million land cost), even though Berkeley County, WV, is building their 600 student capacity green school for only $13 million.
• And out pops the fact that Mon Schools has pre-designed a greater capacity for the green school to accommodate at least 545 classroom seats, at cost of perhaps, what? another $2 million?

And Mon Schools claims it has no money to individually replace its two elementary schools that are nearly a combined two centuries old.

Once again, we see that the priorities are all wrong at Mon Schools.

The football refurbishing price tag makes the superintendent’s recent 26 percent raise look like peanuts. Although, those “peanuts” will add up to serious elephant food as the years go on.

In the meantime, the multi-million dollar cost of football will hit like a brain-damaging blow to the students’ heads.

EVER GREENER

Jared Gorby’s early designs, Woodburn site, bottom.

UPDATE: SEE NEWEST PLANS, WOODBURN SITE:

Read the rest of this entry »

BOE PLEADS THE FIFTH

That’s the Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination over totally unjustifiable pay to the superintendent, especially as compared to the lack of pay to the teachers, bus drivers, and other workers.

Charleston Daily Mail:

Bob Hendricks, who teaches biology at Morgantown High, said there’s a disconnect between teachers and the central office — and that the board reinforced his feelings when it granted the raise to Devono after 70 teachers and other workers landed on the reduction-inforce list for layoffs next year.

“It’s starting to feel like ‘us versus them,’ ” he said of the board. “They’re definitely marginalizing what we do.”

Meanwhile Monongalia County Schools moves ahead with its $6 million plan to refurbish the downtown football field.

An entire small school could be built with that money, or close to it, a school that is badly needed.

Couple that $6 million instead with the Eastwood green school funding and that’s enough money to build the TWO modest sized elementary schools that the county badly needs. And at good locations.

The town financial fathers and and the town financial mothers in Morgantown need to get together with the BOE to better prioritize their spending decisions.

$6 million dollars for a football field when you’ve got schools, or lack thereof, going unfunded, and when you’ve got workers without cost of living raises, essentially taking pay cuts?

“The money, though, said Pam Korzun, isn’t trickling down the system. She and her fellow aides, she said, can’t get a cost-of-living raise.”

Where are the adults on the board?

Did they leave the building with Elvis?

“I just want you to know we appreciate your hard work and your passion,” board president Barbara Parsons said at the meeting.

President Parsons should can her condescending references to other people’s passion. And she should lead the board into putting its money where its mouth (sometimes) is. Otherwise, they are what they are on the Mon school board: patronizing and derelict.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 7:00 p.m. at WOODBURN ELEMENTARY LIBRARY

Some of the Agenda Items Include:

• • Conversation with new Morgantown City Manager Terrence Moore
  • Conversation with new Woodburn Elementary Principal Charlene Brown
  • Report on Lawsuit Against the Mileground Site of Eastwood Elementary (Tony Christini)
  • Election of Officers
  • Collection of Annual Dues ($5.00)

If you would like to run for any office (President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer) contact Susan Eason, also if you have items to be included on the agenda…

NO SUPERINTENDENT SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN THE COMPARATIVE RATE OF THE TEACHERS AND OTHER WORKERS

According to reports, 21 counties in West Virginia pay teachers on average more than in Monongalia County.

Meanwhile, only 4 counties pay their superintendent more than in Monongalia County, and due to the superintendent’s recent pay raise only 1 county will be paying its superintendent more.

Why?

What justifies the superintendent in Monongalia County making more in comparison to superintendents in other counties than the teachers (and other workers) make in comparison to other counties?

Is the superintendent’s record so very stellar? Hardly.

The question must be asked: Is the superintendent paid so highly to keep teachers’ salaries down?

Is the superintendent paid so highly to keep the public shut out, misinformed, and its will pushed aside?

AFT rally today.

AND WHO WILL PAY THE PRICE OF THE BOE’S DELAY? THE CHILDREN

A decent report on the school site status, below.

But why has no media organization conducted its own independent investigation of the issue?

WV MetroNews:

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit to Stop Construction of Monongalia Schools

Staff – Charleston

A Kanawha County judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Morgantown man to stop construction of a new school at a site near the intersection of West Virginia Route 720 and U.S. Route 119 in Monongalia County.

Judge Jennifer Bailey ruled the plaintiff, Tony Christini, did not give the state and the board of education adequate notice prior to filing the suit.

“The statute requires that before you sue entities of this sort, you have to give 30 days written notice,” said Monongalia County Board of Education attorney Greg Bailey.  “That was not done in this case.”

Christini, who represented himself, argued that after initially filing incorrectly, he followed all instructions the state gave him.  But Bailey said resubmitting his suit did not comply with the 30-days notice rule.

In her decision, Bailey said Christini could refile his suit with proper notice.  Christini says he plans to do just that.

“They just keep delaying, delaying, delaying it on meaningless procedural grounds because they’re afraid to have the case heard on its merits because they have no case,” Christini said.  “These are black and white violations of Department of Education policy.”

Christini says those violations include building a school so close to a traffic-congested area.  He says that’s against state code.  Moreover, Christini claims, vehicle exhaust from a large number of cars could pose health risks to students.

“It’s an unsafe and unhealthy site.  It should have never been considered for a school site,” Christini said.

Monongalia Board of Education President Barbara Parsons says plans for the schools will go forward.  If Christini refiles, Parson says the board will address any code violation issues at that time.

“He’s passionate about his issues, obviously,” Parsons said.  “He has the right to proceed in any way he desires, but this is where we are at this point.” Read the rest of this entry »

RALLY TUESDAY

JUDGE’S DISMISSAL PROVIDES AN EXTRA OPPORTUNITY TO BLOCK THE INTERSECTION MILEGROUND SITE

Judge Jennifer Bailey provided a fair hearing of the lawsuit seeking to block the Mileground intersection site, corner of WV 705 & US 119.

Though she dismissed the case, she did not do so “with prejudice” – as both the State and Mon Schools asked, which would have prevented a lawsuit from being filed again.

Instead, she pointed out that the WV Attorney General must have 30 days to decide the issue before the courts can weigh in.

So, within about a month, the WV Attorney General could rule that the Mileground intersection site is prohibited.

Or not. If the Attorney General does not so rule, then the case will simply be refiled in Kanawha County Circuit Court, where a judge should at last rule on its merits.

State Board of Education Policy 6200, which is legally binding, prohibits new school sites that are not “located away from”:

• • “arterial highways”
  • or “traffic and congestion”
  • or “heavily traveled streets”
  • or “the possibility of risk of entrapment”
  • and so on.

The would-be intersection school site violations:

• • access and egress directly at the intersection of two “principal arterial highways,” by federal and state classification
  • borders arterial highway with 25,000 vehicles per day and rising, and borders intersection with a second high traffic arterial highway
  • borders arterial highways and intersection with the worst and second worst possible federal/state rankings for congestion, levels E & F, “approaching gridlock”
  • borders worst levels of congestion thus experiences at least “the possibility” or even the reality “of human entrapment” every school day

Such features at the would-be new school site violate the legally binding state policy four times over.

Read the rest of this entry »

BY JARED GORBY

Check it out: here and here and here.

Awesome work, Jared.

Can you put the whole school on the sidehill and somewhat on the playground below, so that the students can attend school while the new building is being built?  What about a T type shape – with the top of the T being the side hill, and the stem of the T being into the middle of the playground, with bus drop-off/pick-up on one side and car service on the other side of the stem. Then when the students move in, the top of the hill is razed and converted into playground?

updated view:

FAR BETTER ANSWERS EXIST

The WV 705 & US 119 Mileground intersection site of Eastwood Elementary is a vehicle-exhaust-polluted, accident-prone menace to the children of the would-be-consolidated Easton and Woodburn Elementaries.

The ultra-congested highway intersection site is a safety menace to the children, parents, and community members of both elementary schools and of the entire city, county, and to local and regional commuters.

As we sue the local and state educational agencies to prevent this law mocking disaster from proceeding, there’s one thing to keep in mind: the great alternatives to this disaster that exist.

The greatest alternative is to build two good modest-sized schools on two good sites, rather than one large school on one horrible site.

The money exists to do this, or can be made to exist. After all, the current cost of Eastwood is $18.1 million dollars, not counting hidden costs and any cost overruns. [UPDATE: THE ACTUAL COST NOW LOOKS TO BE ABOUT $21 MILLION.] And this is for a school of 450 student capacity. Meanwhile the schematic drawings have already been drawn up to immediately, or very soon, expand the school to hold 545 students. Expanding to 545 students would in fact complete the symmetry of the 450 student capacity structure. Completing Eastwood to the larger capacity would take the overall cost up to or over the ballpark figure of $20 million. And that is enough money to build 2 small schools, or very, very close to it.

Where could the 2 small or modest sized schools be located?

One on the existing Woodburn schoolgrounds. Thus, no necessary land costs, and no mine-fill costs unlike on the Mileground.

And one in Easton’s catchment on a good inexpensive or FREE site. One free site would be on the dozens of empty available acres already owned by Mon Schools in Easton’s catchment at the new University High School (UHS) site (94 acres). This site would also have zero acquisition costs, unlike on the Mileground, though it likely would have mine mitigation costs, as does the Mileground.

For the UHS site as a possibility for a new Easton Elementary, all the environmental, archeological, and geological testing is already done. Meanwhile, a school has stood for over 100 years on the Woodburn schoolgrounds.

So for two school sites like these, virtually the only costs would be building and site preparation costs.

The UHS site for a new Easton Elementary has the added bonus of being on the border of North Elementary’s catchment and near to Suncrest Primary’s catchment, both accessible via Stewartstown Road and Baker’s Ridge Road. Thus this new Easton school could take care of the overcapacity overflow problem of North Elementary and Suncrest Primary.

And the city and the countryside in and around Morgantown would both benefit from having two new schools, with new gymnasiums, new libraries, vital new resources.

And all this could be obtained for ballpark $20 million, the same cost that delivers only 1 new school, one new gymnasium, one new library, in a terrible, dangerous, unhealthy, and wildly-expensive location.

This two-school alternative is one of the very good options that could have been pursued by Mon schools and its partial funder the WV School Building Authority. And that is why we are suing to block the school from going in on the Mileground. We are suing to achieve this two school option or one like it. We are suing to protect the children (also the teachers); we are suing to benefit the city; we are suing to benefit the countryside; we are suing to benefit people who use the roads; we are suing to uphold the laws of safety for the children; we are suing to uphold the laws of health for the children; we are suing to uphold the laws mandating the well-being of the children; we are suing to uphold the right to a “thorough and efficient system of free schools” required by the Constitution of West Virginia. We are suing the local and state educational agencies because it is the right thing to do and because it is the only option left to us.

Otherwise, a consolidated school located next to Mountaineer Middle or on the Woodburn schoolgrounds, slightly expanded, would make for a much better option and location than a school at the potentially lethal Mileground site.

And it is to the everlasting shame of the West Virginia University College of Law, part of the university that negligently suggested and then negligently sold the dreadful intersection site, that they are not (yet) helping us out.

We expect to prevail, regardless, because the laws and the facts are on our side.

Maybe the best question now is how big will our victory be, and in what way, shape, and form will how many people benefit?

“433 wrecks, 30 weeks, 8 sites” – first 30 weeks of 2010:

Read the rest of this entry »

MON SUPERINTENDENT TO RECEIVE 26% RAISE OVER THREE YEARS

And the teachers, cooks, bus drivers, and other workers?

The raise would make Superintendent Frank Devono the 2nd highest paid superintendent in the state, among 55 county superintendents, today’s Dominion Post reports. Meanwhile, Monongalia County teachers rank 22nd in pay out of 55.

Current salary of Monongalia County Superintendent Devono:

$125,000

Salary rank among the 55 county superintendents:

5th

Salary of Monongalia County Superintendent Frank Devono three years from now:

$157,000

Salary rank among the 55 county superintendents:

2nd

Monongalia County teachers’ salary rank among the 55 WV counties:

22nd

(What a great job superintendent Devono and the Board have done lifting Mon teachers’ salaries to the superintendent’s high rank!)

West Virginia teachers’ salary rank among the 50 US states:

47th

Salary of newly hired West Virginia state superintendent Jorea Marple, head of 55 counties:

$165,000

When the superintendent is at or near the top level of pay for superintendents around the state, and the teachers are in the middle level of pay for teachers around the state, then it looks like the superintendent is getting paid to keep teacher salaries (and other salaries) low. One can only suppose that he is.

See the article by Judy Hale, AFT President of West Virginia: “AFT Leader Speaks Out…“

SUPERINTENDENT WORSE

A mere few weeks after a study showed that only half of the local school respondents “‘agreed or strongly agreed that their opinions are respected’ in their respective school [in Mon County] – compared to 65 percent nationally who answered the same way,” the Monongalia County school board rewards the dismal and repugnant performance of the superintendent with a huge raise.

Board President Barbara Parsons: “We’re exceptionally pleased with his performance.”

Exceptionally pleased with the way he leads a school system that does not respect people’s opinions?

Exceptionally pleased with the way he shoves little children into a negligent intersection school site?

“He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do,” said President Parsons.

Well, congratulations President Parsons, you and the entire board must be very proud of yourselves, very pleased. Exceptionally pleased.

West Virginia needs a law providing for communities to recall and replace officials by referendum. The American Federation of Teachers in Monongalia County has leveled its criticisms and could take some action with the general public to get the legislature involved.

West Virginia needs schools that are administered by teachers, and school systems that are actually run by the communities, rather than by a few overwhelmed or incompetent names on a ballot every four years. (Increasing the election cycle and more-or-less doubling the number of school board members could be a first step in that direction.)

Superintendent Devono refers to members of the public who attend school board meetings as “the audience.” What a condescending and repelling view. The attendees should be shown some respect, and should be referred to as “the public” which is exactly what they are. They are not “the audience” there for some show. Though what a show it is.

Exceptionally pleasing? Please.

MORE THAN $18 MILLION FOR A “SMALL” ELEMENTARY

[UPDATE: THE ACTUAL COST NOW LOOKS TO BE ABOUT $21 MILLION.]

“At 450 students, this will still be a small school,” said former Mon BOE President Nancy Walker last year.

Are we reading those numbers correctly?

If so, the combined price of the congested and sound and air polluted Mileground intersection site and the planned new green elementary school comes to over $18 million.

Assuming all goes well.

Does it ever?

Has it so far?

Over $18 million for a “small” school.

(450 seats. That’s what the BOE is still claiming. Ludicrously.)

When was anything approaching an $18 million figure ever even suggested to the public?

Let’s do the math of some, probably not all, of the costs. Approximately:

$2.9  million for the site

$13.7  million for the “building area” (66,416 square feet, 450 student capacity)

$1.5  million for the “soft costs”

_________________________________

$18.1  million for Eastwood Elementary

It would seem that amount of money could instead build two new modest sized elementary schools, one on the Woodburn schoolgrounds, and one in the Easton area – and neither anywhere near the high traffic, congested, and air and sound polluted Mileground.

$18.1 million and still cramped and crowded in Monongalia County elementary schools.

What a scandal.

It’s a scandal that strikes a blow to not only the children of Woodburn and Easton Elementaries, but to the neighborhoods, to the city, to the countryside around Easton, to the commuters and other drivers…to just about everybody.

“It might not be that bad.”

No, it is that bad. And worse. On many levels.
Read the rest of this entry »

MAKES FAVORABLE PREDICTION

In the early morn of Groundhog Day, Woodburn Will trundled out of his sidehill burrow, stood up on his hind legs, sniffed the dewy air, scanned the bright sky and chattered in such a way as to declare that the Woodburn neighborhood of Morgantown will win its lawsuit against the local and state educational agencies, in favor of the health and safety of the area schoolchildren.

“No school on the Mileground!” declared Will with a wag of his little tail and one paw stretched high in the air.

Woodburn Will kicked some patchy snow across the winter grass, ambled about, then ducked back into his burrow for a few more weeks hibernation.

Woodburn Will

THE AFT NEEDS ITS OWN MEDIA TO DO ITS GOOD WORK

Below is a vital letter from the American Federation of Teachers objecting to Mon Schools’ scandalous new administrative position and posting. Read the rest of this entry »