CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Board of Education signed off Wednesday on a decision by the Harrison County Board of Education to close Liberty High School and two middle schools after the 2024-25 school year.
Harrison County School Superintendent Dora Stutler told the state board members Liberty High continues to lose student population.
“Liberty right now is around 420 (students), we’ve even lost more since the beginning of the school year,” Stutler said. “It’s just going down, our population, on that end of the county.”
The Liberty High building is currently at 39% capacity.
Kids that currently go to Liberty will head to Robert C. Byrd High School in the fall of 2025. The addition will give RCB an enrollment of approximately 1,100 students making it the largest high school in the county. Stutler said that will create more opportunities for the new student bodies.
“The last two years we’ve not had soccer there (at Liberty) because we can’t field a team. This year there was difficulty doing girls basketball. I’ve already spoken to the theatre programs in both of those buildings and we’re looking at a beautiful big band and a strings program,” Stutler said.
Harrison County resident Toby Knight urged the state School Board to reject the Harrison County decision. He said the track record isn’t good for communities that lose their schools.
“Show me a community today that is better off once their school is pulled from that area—that’s hard to do,” Knight said. “I can show you a lot of communities that are worse off now because their schools were pulled from them, not better.”
The board also agreed with the decision by the Harrison County BOE to close Mountaineer Middle and Washington Irving middle schools and send the kids to the Liberty High building beginning in the fall of 2025.
Before the state board’s vote Wednesday, Stutler answered a series of enrollment questions from state BOE member Debra Sullivan. Stutler said there are now 120 Harrison County students enrolled in public charter schools and approximately 1,250 students who are home schooled. She said the number of home school students has doubled since the Hope Scholarship was created by state lawmakers.
“Generally, Harrison County prior to the Hope Scholarship we would have about 650 in home schooling. Now you’re looking at 600 to 700 more because of the Hope Scholarship. It affects all of our funding,” Stutler said.
The Hope Scholarship is an education savings account program available for kindergarten through 12th grade students. It is designed to allow parents and families to use the state portion of their child’s education funding to tailor an individualized learning experience that works best for their child. The scholarship amount was nearly $4.500 per child this school year.