Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
At the November 18 Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting, Pocahontas County High School principal Chris Campbell updated the board on the progress the school has made this year.
Campbell shared the school’s mission and vision to ensure that every student is receiving a top tier education and learning to become well-rounded individuals as they prepare to take the next steps in their lives.
The school is focusing on improving attendance and having fewer discipline issues, Campbell said, sharing stats for both.
“Last year’s attendance was bleak,” she said. “Forty-eight percent of our students were chronically absent over the course of the year. This year, our action steps to improve this is ensuring positive attendance messaging, campaigns by establishing procedures and we have our SAT [Students Assistance Team] to support attendance.”
For those students who are considered chronically absent, Campbell said there is a plan in place, which starts with reaching out to parents to find out why the student is absent and can end with intervention from the truancy officer if the absences persist.
Campbell explained that excused absences count toward the chronically absent total, so if a student has a doctor’s note for the absence, it will be accepted, but the absence is still counted.
The school is implementing a reward system for students who have perfect and good attendance as a way to incentivize fewew absences. They range from a weekly incentive, quarterly incentives and annual rewards.
With regard to student behavior, Campbell said there have not been any level 4 referrals. A level 4 is the worst referral that usually results in expulsion. This year, the school has had 13 level 3 referrals, eight of which were vaping violations.
Of those eight, Campbell said five of them occurred on the school bus.
“The bus drivers have been super diligent,” she said. “I met with them this summer and said, this is what I need in order for us to deter vaping on the bus.”
The other vaping issues occurred in the bathrooms. To deter vaping and other issues at school, the teachers and staff are actively engaging with students in the hallways and present where there could be an issue.
There have been 85 level 1 discipline issues and those are mainly students who are tardy to class. Campbell explained that the time between classes was reduced to three minutes, but she said she and a student tested to make sure that amount of time was sufficient to get to class on time and found that it was.
In updates:
• Superintendent Dr. Leatha Williams gave reports on several programs, including the special education special circumstances monitoring and test scores.
Pocahontas County Schools special education department has been under monitoring by the West Virginia Department of Education due to discoveries made during a special education audit.
Williams said she is working with the special education teachers and principals to get the schools compliant and back in order.
“We have been working on lesson plans countywide, showing that they are standards-based,” she said. “We had to rework every schedule in the county, every special education teacher’s schedule in the county, that they provide services five days a week.
“We have looked at continuation of services in all of our classrooms,” she continued. “We did an internal review and checklist and IEP [Individual Education Plan] development and decision making. Eighty-nine percent of our IEPs were non-compliant.”
Those IEPs were pulled and are in the process of being fixed. Williams said there are 156 IEPs that have to be corrected to be in compliance.
Moving on to test scores or benchmarks, Williams shared the scores of kindergarten through eighth grade in both reading and math. In additional to the scores, she shared how many students in each grade were flagged for intervention for scoring at the lowest level.
Those results are as follows:
Kindergarten – no students flagged.
First grade – 63 tested in reading, six were flagged; 63 tested in math, nine were flagged.
Second grade – 52 tested in reading, 15 were flagged; 52 tested in math, 16 were flagged.
Third grade – 62 tested in reading, 30 were flagged; 62 tested in math, 21 were flagged.
Fourth grade – 59 tested in reading, 26 were flagged; 64 tested in math, 29 were flagged.
Fifth grade – 64 tested in reading, 33 were flagged; 61 tested in math, 36 were flagged.
Sixth grade – 57 tested in reading, 17 were flagged; 57 tested in math, 41 were flagged.
Seventh grade – 64 tested in reading, 32 were flagged; 65 tested in math, 31 were flagged.
Eighth grade – 52 tested in reading, 22 were flagged; 52 tested in math, 32 were flagged.
Overall, 535 students were tested in the two subjects and there are 181 in need of intervention in reading and 215 in need of intervention in math.
“You can see that we have some problems there and if I had to identify a couple areas of concern, fifth grade is an area of concern, generally,” Williams said. “Seventh and sixth grade math would be an area of concern. You can see, there are more and more students that are in the intervention tier.”
Although she didn’t have it broken down by grade level, Williams also shared the proficiency of reading and math at the high school for last year. In reading, 40.82 percent of students were proficient and in math, 28.57 percent.
Reversely, that means approximately 71 percent of high school students did not score on grade level in math and approximately 59 percent of high school students did not score on grade level in reading.
“We have some work to do,” Williams said.
The school system recently received a 21st Century Grant which is being used for tutoring and after school programs for students who need help with their grades.
In special recognitions:
Williams and the board honored Lois Wilfong for her efforts to help PCHS receive the College Access and Success Champion School designation. They also recognized Joey Van Meter who was named a finalist for the U.S. Senate Youth Program. He is one of seven students from West Virginia selected for this honor.
In personnel management, the board approved:
• Employment of Tresten Taylor as special education teacher on IB waiver until completion of alternative certification, at Pocahontas County High School.
• Resignation of Jennifer Yoakum, as special education/classroom/bus aide, at Pocahontas County High School, effective October 31.
• Employment of Victoria Lawson as substitute custodian for Pocahontas County Schools, at state basic service personnel salary, for the 2025-2026 school year.
• Employment of Jeanette Rittenhouse as substitute special education/classroom/ bus aide for Pocahontas County Schools, at state basic service personnel salary, for the 2025-2026 school year, as needed.
• Resignation of Chloe Schaffner as co-athletic director at Green Bank Elementary-Middle School, effective October 20.
• Resignation of Melissa Jordan as co-athletic director at Green Bank Elementary-Middle School, effective upon the hiring of an athletic director.
• Employment of the following 21st Century Grant positions, contingent upon adequate number of students for the program:
– Charlie Hughes, site coordinator at Marlinton Middle School.
– Cammy Kesterson, site coordinator at Green Bank Elementary-Middle School.
• Darlene Arbogast, Charlie Hughes, Krystal Lewis, Greg Morgan and Denise Sharp as mentors for teachers for Pocahontas County Schools, effective for the 2025-2026 school year at a rate of $25 per hour, for 50 hours, for a total of $1,250. Assignments will be made by the director of personnel.
