CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - In the West Virginia school board’s first meeting with several new members, it was clear that the newcomers face a learning curve.
Tom Campbell opened his first regular meeting as president, then realized his microphone hadn’t been turned on yet, so he asked the audience to bear with him and the revamped panel.
“I’m certainly in a seat I haven’t been prepped for,” Campbell said.
That also was true for four new members on the nine-member board Wednesday. For some it meant learning about complex issues in unfamiliar counties struggling with school-aid formulas and proposed school consolidations.
And the board postponed discussing several matters until Thursday, because Gov. Jim Justice’s State of the State address Wednesday night was expected to include education. Campbell expects another board meeting will be needed next week.
“I’m hearing his agenda is going to be heavily based on education, so it’s going to be a heavy lift,” Campbell said. “Anything the board can help him lift, help the Legislature with. We can’t appropriate. But I think we can help inform and advocate.”
Instead, Wednesday’s board meeting was about listening - “on purpose,” Campbell said.
Last week Campbell was elected president and Chuck Hatfield was named vice president after two other board members resigned. Justice appointed Hatfield and three other veteran educators to the board in recent weeks: Miller Hall, Dave Perry and Barbara Whitecotton.
Justice still has one vacancy to fill. Beverly Kingery, who resigned as board secretary last week but said she was staying on as a member, was absent from Wednesday’s meeting.
Campbell is by far the board’s most senior member. He was appointed to the board in 2012 after 16 years in the House of Delegates.
Campbell said he thought the new board members “did an excellent job” at their first meeting.
“I mean, the questions were really probing. Every one of them was paying attention,” he said.
An hour-long public comment period was dominated by residents who were critical of school consolidation plans. The board also heard pleas from financial officers in the expansive mountain counties of Greenbrier, Pocahontas and Randolph for help in school-aid funding. The funding formula measures student enrollment and other factors to determine how much money each county gets annually. State lawmakers have previously killed bills to change the formula.
Whitecotton interrupted a group from Randolph County that was going over a previously proposed facilities plan, including consolidating one elementary school into another, resulting in longer bus rides for some students.
“I apologize. I’m new,” she told one of the presenters. “You’re having to go back over some old stuff.”
Eventually, Hatfield said he wanted to give the board more time to soak in the plan.
“It needs to be dealt with as soon as possible,” Hatfield said. “It’s also not fair for us to make a rash decision.”
Whitecotton, who spent eight years as Hardy County’s schools superintendent, said her first meeting was “a lot of listening and a lot of evaluating. Our past experience really makes a difference. Many of the things that the counties were taking about, we know. We’ve been there. So in a way our past experiences as educators come into play and are very valuable.
Now, her job requires her to make decisions on a broader level.
“My little county of Hardy prepared me,” she said. “But now I have to think ’state.’”
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