The Senate Education Committee advanced a bill intended to give counties more latitude when they hire a superintendent.
Until now, local school boards have had to hire superintendents who live in the county or a contiguous county. SB694 removes the county residency requirement from state law, although local boards could maintain their own similar requirements if they choose.
“The summary of the change here is, it’s just giving the county school board — the elected county school board — control over their hiring, and then they would take the credit or the heat over that decision,” said Senator Kevan Bartlett, R-Kanawha.
After a long discussion about what parameters should exist, if any, the committee advanced the bill. It now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
COMMENTARY by T.J. MEADOWS: Know your role.
“I think we all want to make sure county boards have the authority to choose the best candidate they see fit,” said Drew McClanahan, legislative policy director for the state Department of Education.
But he said the current geographic limitations have also limited available candidates for superintendent roles. He noted that under the current structure, a Kanawha resident could take a superintendent job in Fayette County but not Cabell.
“When we look at available individuals, it does get difficult to find somebody who might be within that county or a contiguous county,” McClanahan said.
Some of the questions raised by committee members focused on whether there should still be some way for state law to define a suitable distance for a county superintendent to live from work, like an hour or two.
Additional questions had to do with whether the state school board should have a more specific obligation to choose someone locally appropriate to lead a school system when a takeover occurs.
“These superintendents are pillars of the community. They’re people who have to go in and they have to run our systems efficiently and help provide a thorough and efficient education,” said Senator Trenton Barnhart, R-Pleasants. “The closer they can be to the community the better.”
Pendleton County Superintendent Nicole Hevener was in the audience of the committee room to observe and had not intended to speak. But she wound up being called forward to discuss her view on how the bill could affect a county like hers. Pendleton is rural and sprawls across almost 670 square miles.
“For me, leaving the board office in Franklin, West Virginia, to Elkins, West Virginia, would take me — in a county vehicle, being a law abiding citizen — an hour and 15 minutes, and that is a contiguous county,” Hevener told lawmakers.
“So I just wanted to point out that we need to look at our state and the size of the counties and consider that because one hour (as a geographic boundary) would be very limiting.”
At the time, the committee was discussing whether to maintain a requirement that a superintendent live within two hours drive of the county board office — or possibly limit that to a one hour’s drive.
Senate Education Chairwoman Amy Nichole Grady, R-Mason, asked for Hevener’s additional thoughts on whether the residency requirement should be as flexible as possible.
“If often wonder if, in this building, we think of things and we accidentally complicate them instead of making things easier,” Grady said. “So I’m wondering if having a time limit on it at all makes it more complicated than it should be and if just leaving it up to a county school board would be easier.”
Howard O’Cull, executive director of the West Virginia School Board Association, said local boards should be able to take responsibility for their own decisions for better or worse.
“This gives, in a time when it’s very difficult to find superintendents — it gives another opportunity for county boards,” O’Cull told senators. “And if they hire someone in Mingo to work in Monongalia, they’ll have to defend that. Some of them would do that well; some of them wouldn’t.”