CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The 2016-2017 school year in Kanawha County seemed to focus on one major event that changed the community forever: the June 2016 flood.
The school year ends Wednesday.
Students and staff will start their summer vacation after a challenging, yet successful year, according to Kanawha County School Superintendent Dr. Ron Duerring.
“We continued to move forward with our technology initiative, classes continued, we improved our graduation rate and I think it’s been a pretty good year,” Duerring said.
The Elk River communities, including Clendenin and Elkview, were impacted the most by the flood. Herbert Hoover High School and Clendenin Elementary had to shut their doors after high waters destroyed both buildings.
Duerring said there was a lot of uncertainty at the time. Students and staff lost homes as well. The community was, and still is, broken. He said his staff made sure students still received the best education despite what was happening around them.
“I think our first initial reaction was — how are we going to take care of our children? What are we going to do to get them back to some kind of normalcy? We were able to make that happen,” he said.
As a result, Hoover had to share space at Elkview Middle School on a split schedule. Clendenin was housed at Bridge Elementary for most of the school year.
Portable classroom buildings were installed at Bridge, where Clendenin students will spend their last day of school. The portables at Hoover won’t be ready until July.
Duerring said they had to balance a lot on their plate when it came to recovery efforts.
“To continue to take care of the flooded area, to work with federal agencies, to work with the community and, at the same time, which was a big piece of what we did every day — continue to keep the school system running and making sure that everybody got their full education,” he said.
From 2015-2016, Duerring said the county’s graduation rates improved.
“We were at 80.38 in 2015. In the 2016 school year, we jumped to 86.3 percent,” he said.
The goal for next year, Duerring said, is to improve academic achievement and to work with architects and engineers to begin design plans for the new Hoover and Clendenin schools.