SPENCER, W.Va. — Two rural schools in Roane County are on the chopping block due to funding issues and a continually decreasing enrollment.
The Roane County Board of Education is set to vote Thursday on a proposed plan that would close Geary Elementary/Middle School and Walton Elementary/Middle School. If approved, students would be merged into Spencer Elementary/Middle School and pre-K students would be taught in an early education center at Roane County High School.
The board voted against consolidating the schools this time last year.
The state BOE declared a state of emergency in July due to the county’s major financial strains. Roane County school officials had to ask the state for an advance of state funds to cover expenses twice in the span of four months.
The state board cited that Roane County was projected to have a $3 million deficit by the end of the school year, despite having close to a $2 million budget surplus in 2021. The board also cited poor building utilization.
Roane County Schools Superintendent Michelle Stellato says this was not the first option.
“It’s a sad option. It just shouldn’t be,” Stellato said Monday on MetroNews “Talkline.” “I always say that Dollar General figured out how to operate small, efficient businesses in rural communities. Schools should be able to figure out how to operate small, efficient schools in rural communities.”
“It should not be the first option, but it has to be an option when you cannot come up with something else. Right now, with the financial picture of Roane County Schools, I cannot come up with another one,” she continued.
Stellato, who took over on July 1, says she’s tried to avoid this, but there doesn’t seem to be any other options.
“We have put our team together and we have talked with folks in the community,” she said. “I’ve had long conversations with the flag bearers of the opposition to this and said, ‘Tell me what I’m missing,’ but no one can seem to come up with a viable solution in our community that doesn’t involve reducing the costs that are associated with keeping small, rural community schools in operation without any assistance or any way of subsidizing those schools.”
She says that counties need to be responsible with funds.
“Fiscal management is a part of running any business. If you don’t manage the budget, you can’t operate the budget, so here we are. Our budget hasn’t been managed very well, and we’ve got declining enrollment. When you have declining enrollment and declining revenue, you’ve got a problem,” Stellato said.
Throughout the consolidation public hearings, residents have expressed their displeasure and frustration with potentially losing more local schools. One complaint has been the fact that students on the other end of the county from Spencer will have to spend much of their mornings sitting on the bus.
Stellato says she completely understands the frustration.
“It’s not fair for the kids. It’s not fair that they’re going to have to ride buses for an hour. My rural community school closed the year I went to kindergarten, so I was that kid that was on the bus for an hour. It’s just not ideal. It’s not ideal to keep kids on buses,” Stellato said. “The idea that people are upset, I don’t blame them. If the tables were turned, I would be one of them.”
While Roane County Schools has had a problem with managing its budget at times over the past few years, the county’s declining enrollment also plays a big factor into the consolidation proposal.
The state school aid formula allocates state money to counties based on enrollment, and many rural counties see a decline in enrollment year after year, which means less funding to help keep the small schools open.
Stellato, like many others across the state, wants to see the formula changed.
“There is definitely a need for an adjustment to this, especially in rural counties,” Stellato said. “I lived in Morgantown for 15 years. Educating a child in Morgantown does not have the same issues that is has when I try to educate my kids in Left Hand, West Virginia, and Walton and Spencer. We are remote. We struggle to get specialized services in our county, we struggle to hire fully certified teachers. It just costs more and on top of that, our county hasn’t ever passed a levy.”
She says changes can be made, but action needs to be taken.
“There are lots of things that we need to consider. There are ways and smart people that can do it, but it seems like we talk about it, and we never get it to the table, and we never begin to move the needle,” Stellato said.