BELLE, W.Va. — The Kanawha County Board of Education voted unanimously Monday evening to close Malden Elementary School.
Malden is now the third elementary school to have been voted to close as part of a consolidation plan that has Malden Elementary, Belle Elementary, Mary Ingles Elementary and Midland Trail Elementary combining into one, new school if the School Building Authority approves the funding for the construction of the building.
The board has voted within the last week to close Belle, Mary Ingles and Malden. The board will hold a public hearing Tuesday where they will vote on the last remaining elementary school on the chopping block in Midland Trail.
Sherry Clark, a teacher at Malden Elementary, says she feels defeated.
“I feel pretty defeated, actually. I was hoping some new help, or some new insight would come to light,” Clark said Monday. “I’ve devoted a lot of years to Malden Elementary and I love it and I really would hate to see it close.”
The recent closings are due to continuing drops in both population and enrollment in Kanawha County over the past few years. The board has stated in every meeting that they have to operate a budget, and with funding from the state being based off the number of pupils in the county, changes have to be made.
Tresa Howell, a resident in the upper Kanawha Valley area and a candidate for House of Delegates, says consolidation is hard on small communities.
Tresa Howell
“It’s difficult on the kids. It’s difficult on the communities,” Howell said. “I’ve always said that churches and schools are the center location for families and friends and communities to come out and spend time together, and this definitely makes it difficult.”
Howell also says a large school environment is not the best thing for kids in eastern Kanawha County.
“I don’t know that many children in the upper Kanawha Valley that choose to go to a large college, so think about when they grow up and they are no longer in a small community school,” Howell said. “This elementary school alone would be the largest in the county.”
The board addressed a topic Monday evening that had not been touched on with great detail in either of the previous two hearings, and that was the future of the buildings for the schools being closed.
Tom Williams
Kanawha County Schools Superintendent Tom Williams announced that if a community requested the building be given to them for other use, the board would vote on the request and likely grant it, as they did when the town of Marmet requested the former Marmet Elementary School building be given back to the community to be used for various offices. Williams also stated that, if a community did not want the building of their former elementary school, then he would rather see it demolished than become an “eye sore” in the area.
Clark says teachers from all four closing schools need to have meetings to get acquainted with each other and address student needs before they combine into a large school.
“Teachers need to meet from all the schools, for one thing, to get to know each other and maybe have meetings like we used to when we would move kids up from our elementary (school) up to the middle school. We would have meetings and meet on each student and say what their needs were,” Clark said.
Board members addressed members of the public again Monday evening after speakers were finished, sharing that each one of them was unhappy with the fact that school closures are needed, and that everyone on the podium had dealt with consolidation on a personal basis.
Reverend Bill Sigler, a priest in the Episcopal Diocese in eastern Kanawha County, has spoken at every public hearing regarding school closures in his area. Sigler, who has fought for each school in front of the board, said Monday that he appreciated board members showing emotion.
“Thank you for showing emotion at these meetings,” Sigler said to board members Monday evening. “It’s nice to know that you guys are human, and you’re not just making decisions to make decisions.”
The board will hold its final public hearing regarding the current consolidation plan Tuesday evening regarding the closing of Midland Trail Elementary School. The hearing will begin at 6 p.m. at Riverside High School.