MEADOW BRIDGE, W.Va. — Supporters of Meadow Bridge High School joined hands in a circle Thursday night on the school’s football field—they prayed that voters would defeat Saturday’s school bond issue in Fayette County and that their school would remain open.
Emotions are high in Fayette County communities on the verge of deciding if the county will continue to deal with declining enrollments in crumbling buildings or if residents will decide to pay more taxes to close a few schools, build a few new ones and renovate some others.
“They truly love their school and support it in all kinds of ways and in my mind that’s perhaps what will be lost if the bond does pass and the school is closed,” Meadow Bridge Principal Mark Skaggs told MetroNews Friday.
Skaggs admitted it’s difficult to keep schools like Meadow Bridge open. It has an enrollment of approximately 250 students in grades 7-12.
“Because of the declining enrollment and the expense that happens in order to produce the curriculum you have to deliver the bill gets hard to pay,” Skaggs said. “By consolidating you eliminate some of that expense.”
The Fayette County bond call includes closing Meadow Bridge and Fayetteville high schools along with building a new elementary school in Mount Hope, a new middle school in Oak Hill while renovating Midland Trail, Oak Hill and Valley high schools. Fayette County voters are being asked to put up $39 million in property tax increases with approval leading the state School Building Authority to add another $25 million.
Fayette County has had problems with school facilities during the past several years but residents have rejected previous bond issues. The problems seemed to crescendo last year when parts of Collins Middle School in Oak Hill had to be closed because of dangerous structural problems.
Skaggs said the issue comes down to whether Fayette County’s low-income and fixed-income residents will commit to paying more to finance new schools.
“Those are the ones in the past that have voted against bonds and defeated the efforts of the county to try and improve buildings,” Skaggs said. “That’s the one base that may hurt us more than anything else.”
Skaggs characterized the Meadow Bridge situation as the same that happened in dozens of other West Virginia communities over the past 20 years—a fight to keep the community school.
“Some of the kids would go to Midland (Trial), some might choose to go to (Greenbrier) West and others may stay in Summers (County), so you can see how the community is just going to be dissolved,” Skaggs said.