Tim Walker
AMR Reporter
At the July 1 Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting incumbent Sam Gibson and former board member and president Emery Grimes were sworn in. The two won the seats in the non-partisan election in May.
In addition to being seated as a board member, Grimes was also elected to serve as president for the coming year.
Grimes has considerable past experience on the board, having served on the board for 11 years, seven of which as board president.
Becky Campbell was elected vice-president of the board.
Getting down to business, Kristy Tritapoe gave two lengthy presentations to the board. The first one was about the voluntary preschool program for three-to-four year-old students. She said West Virginia law requires every school system to establish a Core Preschool Team, of which she serves as the local director.
She said one of the team’s duties is to develop policy by which children are assigned to their preschool locations. Tritapoe explained that there are four preschool locations in the county – Green Bank School; Marlinton Elementary, Hillsboro Elementary, and School Days Childcare, LLC.
The Core Team’s new location assignment policy is that parents submit their first and second choice for their child’s preschool location. The first choice is automatically granted unless that location has the maximum 20 preschool children already assigned there, in which case the parent’s second location choice will be approved. Using this formula, so far for this coming school year, there are 19 preschool children assigned to Green Bank; 19 assigned to Marlinton Elementary, six assigned to School Days and five assigned to Hillsboro Elementary.
Jennifer Buzzard, owner of School Days Chidcare, expressed concern about this new selection process, since last year, under the old process, she had 17 preschool students assigned to School Days. Buzzard said that with only six students this year, she will not be able to afford to hire the required certified teacher. Tritapoe said the school is willing to advertise for a certified teacher for School Days and pay that teacher’s salary. Buzzard said she would be troubled that a teacher who does not answer to her would be working at her private school, but she can live with that. She asked what would happen if the schools are unable to find a certified teacher to hire. There was no good answer to that.
Tritapoe also made a very lengthy and complex presentation about the school’s Special Education Program. She said many conventional teachers are upset that special ed teachers only work in the classroom four days a week, spending Wednesdays doing nothing but preparation work.
Tritapoe produced and passed along to the board members, a three-inch-thick binder showing all the federal and state reports and other paperwork that each special education teacher must complete and submit weekly for each special education student they have. She explained that unless each special education teacher has one full day per week to get those mandatory reports done and submitted accurately, they are in violation of State and Federal laws.
She said every school system in the state, and even across the country, has to either allow their special ed teachers one day a week or one week a month just to keep up with these required reports, and conventional teachers just don’t understand that.
Luci Mosesso, of the Marlinton Elementary School Local School Improvement Council, reported on the concerns surrounding the demolition of the old BOE building and the school’s summer playground programs. She said they are working cooperatively with the demolition company to ensure that the playground can be safely used for summer programs.
In other matters, the members approved:
• Revisions of 10 NEOLA Policies.
• Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with the Family Resource Network and with Youth Behavioral Services to provide services for the schools
• An MOU with Marshall University to provide Dual Credit classes this coming school year, which are English 11 & 12, Psychology, Sociology and Physics.
• the recommended Service and Professional personnel actions, and conducted a Members of the Board Discussion.
