FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. — New Fayette County Schools Superintendent David Warvel says it has been a smooth transition so far upon officially stepping into the role July 1st.
Warvel succeeds former Fayette County Schools Superintendent Gary Hough who retired after serving in the role since July 2020 and being an educator in the county for a little over four decades.
Warvel said he has been working closely under Hough’s guidance and leadership.
“He’s been very good to be a guide on the side to help me with the transition here,” Warvel told MetroNews. “It has been really easy going as far as I’m concerned, he’s an easy guy to work with.”
Warvel said he lives in Fayette County and has worked in the county school system before, so it has been an easy and familiar fit.
He had also previously served as school superintendent in Summers County for five years and served as a county schools superintendent in Ohio for two years before moving to West Virginia.
Warvel said while he has experience in this type of educational leadership position, he knows every school system can have its differences.
“You know, there’s different things you have to work on with county policies, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good or bad, it’s just how the boards of education voted and you honor that, and everybody has a different way to help kids out,” he said.
Warvel said that since working in Fayette County, there has been a lot of change in the consolidation of schools and getting the school systems to transition to five campuses. He said between former Superintendent Hough and himself, there has been enough change to get where they need to be so far.
Warvel said he’s proud of the direction the county school system is headed.
He said this past academic year, the school system has seen between a 5% and 6% increase in student achievement.
Warvel said he plans to only keep building on that success.
“What I want to keep doing is moving from five or six percentage, from that to the next school year and build on that, because there’s a lot of great things going on in this school system,” Warvel said.
Warvel said they are now working to launch what is known as an Empowerment Initiative across all of the county’s middle schools this coming school year after first launching it at Midland Trail.
He said this initiative gives students the freedom to have a say in their education while enhancing classroom engagement, and after implementing it at Midland Trail, test scores have come back very positive there over the last couple of years.
Warvel said a second piece to that initiative is working with AI to fully implement it into the classroom.
He said educational leaders have already been testing out AI in the classroom and are showing that it’s only serving as a boost to the innovative learning already taking place.
“They came back with some really detailed ways they’re going to work in the classroom to enhance it and not to use it as the expert, the teacher is the expert, but use AI in a way that it should be used, to enhance our lives or to enhance our learning,” he said.
Additionally, the Fayette County Board of Education recently voted to ban the use of cellphones from the classroom after Governor Patrick Morrisey signed a bill allowing for county school systems to enact such a policy.
Warvel said he knows cellphones are an addictive piece of equipment, but in Fayette County, there will be some exceptions, such as students having the ability to use them at the secondary level for duel credit classes and career and tech classes based on approval.
He said everyone else will essentially not be able to use them in the classroom at all.
“Pre-K through five, no cellphones at all, junior high six through eight and nine through twelve have a little exceptions to the rule, we understand that for medical reasons or for actual use in the classroom, but for the most part, they will need to be put behind a locker,” he said.
Warvel added though, that since the policy will be brand new this year, he will give somewhat of a grace period.