LOGAN COUNTY, W.Va. –The Logan County Board of Education will hold a public meeting Tuesday evening to discuss a proposal to close Verdunville Elementary and consolidate its students into Omar Elementary.
State Superintendent Michele Blatt told MetroNews that the proposal follows a rockslide triggered by heavy rain on April 8, which forced the school to close through Spring Break.
“Williamson Shriver Architects worked on the slip that occurred and removed some things and then American Geotech actually gave clearance after the phase one work was completed to return the students to the school but then requested a quite extensive amount of work in a phase two that they actually put in their engineering report that students could not return to school until that second phase was done,” Blatt said.
She explained that, according to the report they received on May 1, the second phase of repairing the slip would have cost $600,000.
Blatt said they wanted to make sure the investment would be worthwhile before proceeding with phase two.
“Superintendent Huffman at that time, worked with the department, and made the decision that before we invested $600,000 dollars into this school that we would need to do an analyze of the building as a whole to determine if there were things over the next couple of years that were going to have to be done to that school, to decide if it was worth the investment on the hill side,” she said.
Blatt said they received Williamson Shriver’s finalized contract for the full building evaluation on June 3. After the evaluation was completed, they received the final report on July 21, which estimated it would cost eight million dollars over several years to bring the building up to code.
She said that during this period, misinformation circulated about the reasons for moving students and about the future of the property if the board chose to close the school. Blatt explained that they started examining the issues at Verdunville solely because of the slip, and no discussions have taken place regarding the property’s future.
“Lot of rumors, lots of misinformation and I know people are just really passionate about their local community schools and we understand that, but we just really want to do what’s best for the students and in this case, what is the safest place for these students to be,” she said.
The meeting is set to take place at the Chief Logan Convention Center beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Blatt said she hopes residents will gain a better understanding of the proposal at the meeting.
“I hope that everyone is able to come and have their questions answered, understand the process that we went through, the timelines that we were looking at, but also the way that we were facing the safety issues,” she said.
The school has served the community for almost 70 years.