HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A decision to provide little to no funding to Cabell County public libraries and parks now lies in the hands of voters.
Kathy McKenna, executive director of the Greater Huntington Parks and Recreation District, said she was disappointed in the Cabell County Board of Education’s decision Tuesday night to strip $500,000 from the district in order to make room for classroom needs.
“We feel those funds belong to us, not to the Board of Education, so now we have to decide how to proceed with that,” McKenna told MetroNews Wednesday.
After hearing public comments in a room of more than 100 people for more than five hours, the board voted 5-0 on a proposed order to take about $2 million combined from the parks district and the Cabell County Public Library System in connection with its 5-year excess levy. Voters will decide whether to approve the levy in the May 2024 election.
McKenna said she’s hoping the levy gets voted down. She said parks provide just as much value to communities as schools do.
“We have lots of activities that we offer throughout the year for most of the holidays and various special events. We do a lot of that stuff for free. Those will be things that will all have to be given a hard look at,” she said.
Cabell County Schools Superintendent Ryan Saxe said the cuts are necessary due to financial pressure caused by inflation, a lack of additional funding from the COVID pandemic and student enrollment decreasing.
“While we very much value and appreciate what it is that our beautiful parks and wonderful libraries provide to the community, doing so at the expense of the school district’s budget is something that we have to be able to prioritize our students and our classrooms first,” Saxe told MetroNews.
Saxe said over the last eight years, the school district lost close to 1,600 students. The issue, he said, has plateaued in recent years with only 50 students leaving the school system in 2022. Saxe said the decrease in students leads to a reduction in state aid, but normal operations must continue.
“Depending on how many students you lose, we still have to run the same buses on the same roads. We still have to be able to put the same amount of gas in our school buses. We still have to have the same number of cooks in our kitchens to help serve meals,” he said.
Public libraries in the county have received around $1.7 million from the levy for the past two years. That funding amount would drop to $195,000, according to Tuesday’s vote.
Brena Bowen, executive director of Cabell County Public Library, said the system is in danger of closing branches because they won’t be able to afford to operate all eight of their locations.
“There is a huge possibility that locations will have to close, absolutely,” Bowen said.
Bowen said libraries are dealing with the same financial problems that schools are dealing with.
“They talked about inflation, we’ve dealt with inflation. They talked about rising construction costs, we’ve dealt with rising construction costs. The difference is we’ve been able to stay in the black and I guess they can’t say the same thing,” she said.
Libraries have been receiving funding from the school excess levy since 1967.
“It’s awful to think of this partnership, the fact that after so many years going hand-in-hand and helping people in our community, to know that this is what they think of our relationship and this is what they think of libraries,” Bowen said.
As for the park district, their $500,000 they’ve been receiving every year since 1983, will be reduced to nothing. McKenna said they use that money to maintain a number of parks in the county.
“A lot of people believe that the park district is just Ritter Park and we are so much more,” she said. The park district also stretches into Wayne County.
In addition to classroom learning, McKenna said students need outdoor space to take part in recreational activities.
“We provide a place for them to get out and recreate and to come to our events, the various sports fields that we offer, just all kinds of outdoor recreation. It’s very important to the well-being of our entire community,” she said.
Bowen agreed and said they offer a lot of summer reading programs for kids. They also assist the elderly with how to read.
“It’s a safe haven. It’s a place to learn and grow,” Bowen said of libraries. “Research shows that if kids are reading, they’re obviously becoming more educated.”
Saxe said funding cuts are nothing new to the district. They’re trying to prevent further cuts to employee salaries and positions as a whole, but he said that might be inevitable.
“We actually began tightening our belt back this past personnel season. We eliminated 80 positions in the school district. This coming school year with the ending of American Rescue Plan dollars, there’s going to be even more positions that we’ll have to reduce,” he said.
The school board also wants to use levy funding to focus on beefing up security, Saxe said.
“At the top of our list was school safety and being able to fund our school resource officers in our middle schools and our high schools,” he said, in addition to career technical education and workforce development needs.
McKenna said the park district is now considering litigation against the Cabell County Board of Education. Bowen told MetroNews in response to that possible action, “nothing is off the table.”
Saxe said he was aware of the potential litigation but could not comment on the matter at this time.