Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
At the May 7 Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting, board members had a discussion with representatives from Thrasher Engineering, Region 4 and the Town of Marlinton concerning the former board office located next to Marlinton Elementary School.
Since 2018, when the board office moved to its current location in Buckeye, the old office building in Marlinton has been used for storage. The building has been the subject of conversation for several years, with the board considering options for demolition.
Region 4 Senior Project Specialist Cassie Lawson said the board received a $245,000 grant to demolish the building and Region 4 had a pre-bid meeting in which six primary contractors and one sub-contractor showed interest in bidding on the project.
Lawson said there were a few questions at the meeting that the board needed to answer before the project is put out to bid May 21.
The biggest concern is the concrete slab under the building. It was explained that the slab is quite large and is up to three feet deep in certain areas.
During the discussion, it was said that it would cost more to break up the slab and fill in the hole, than to just leave it in place and smooth over the area.
Lawson said she was under the impression that the school wanted to keep the slab and seek grant funding to put a pavilion and picnic tables there for the students to use at lunchtime during warmer weather.
The board agreed that it is better to keep the slab in place and have in the bid for the contractors to make the area smooth after the building is demolished.
Lawson said once the building is demoed, the asbestos will be taken to a special location and the rest of the building will be disposed of in Greenbrier County.
In reports:
• School nurse Jenny Workman gave a report on the school year and explained what she and the three LPNs do at the schools on a regular basis. She explained that they do a lot more than just “put a band-aid on it and get ice packs.”
She reported that from August 2023 to April 2024, the nurses had a total of 8,954 clinic visits and from those visits, children were sent home fewer than 900 times. In the other cases, the students were able to return to class.
Along with those clinic visits, Workman said the nurses have a list of students with medical conditions that need monitoring, and with some students, if they leave the school for a field trip, a nurse must go with them to ensure they are safe.
Hillsboro Elementary School principal Becky Spencer added that not only do the nurses help the students with their health conditions, they are also educating them and their classmates on how to see the symptoms of the condition and ways to treat it.
With some conditions, such as diabetes, students are learning the causes of the disorder and ways to avoid becoming pre-diabetic.
The board thanked Workman and the LPNs for their dedication to the students and thanked them for the information they provided.
In financial management, the board approved payment of vendor listing, payment of local government purchasing card, extra duty pay, bank reconciliation, grant awards, school budget for 2024-2025, Step 7 budget for 2024-2025 and child nutrition programs food service budget 2025.
In miscellaneous management, the board approved the following:
• Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Pocahontas County Schools and the Southern Education Services Cooperative for bus operator training/examination services.
Personnel management will appear in next week’s edition of The Pocahontas Times.
The next board of education meeting is Tuesday, May 28, at 6 p.m. in the board conference room in Buckeye.
