001I'd like call the meeting of the Pocahontas County Board of Education to order. All members are present. Let's stand for a pledge allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. To the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Delegations, Lucy Hammonds, Dr. Hollingsworth. And memorandum. Uh this evening I wanted to take a moment to remember and honor the life of and legacy of Dr. Sue Hollingsworth. It took me a few weeks to organize my thoughts and put into words what Sue meant to myself and so many in this community, and I believe that speaks to the massive gravity of her impact. To many, Sue was a treasured school board member and board president. To others, she was a
002strong and steady leader. Someone people turned to when times were hard or decisions were difficult. But to me, and to so many in this county, Sue was first a teacher, a principal, a mentor, and a quiet force for good in our community. Sue served as my principal from first grade through eighth grade at Hillsboro Elementary School. For those of us that walked those halls under her leadership, she wasn't just running a school, she was shaping lives. Hillsboro Elementary and the greater Hillsboro community were profoundly important to her. She believed in this place and in its people. And that belief showed in everything that she did. She was deeply respected. People did not always agree with her decisions, as is true of any strong leader. But they trusted her. They knew that every decision she made
003was rooted in her genuine desire to do what was best for everyone involved. She listened. She considered all sides, and then she acted with confidence, conviction, and integrity. She was a strong leader who didn't suffer fools. She held people to high standards because she believed they were capable of meeting them. But beyond the firm handshake and steady eye, Sue had a much softer side that many people didn't get to see. I saw that when I was a child. Sorry. During my elementary school years, our county was struggling economically. We'd been hit hard by a string of factory and businesses closing. The community of Hillsborough was especially hit hard during the early '90s when Denmark hospital closed. Many families lost jobs, and my own family was no exception. Both my parents lost their jobs. My dad
004had to take a job on the road just to support us. Money for fun, money for anything beyond survival, just wasn't there. Sue saw that, and she cared. One day, Sue and her husband Daniel surprised a few of us Hillsborough kids and took us to see the Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was small to some, but to us, it was everything. It was a day away from worry, from sadness, from the heaviness our families were carrying. It was laughter and wonder and the feeling, if for only a little while, like everything was okay. Sue and Daniel bought me a coloring book that day. For years, I never colored a single page. I kept it just the way it was, untouched, because I wanted to preserve the memory of that kindness, that feeling of being seen
005and of being cared for. Years later, when my father passed away, my mother was adamant about one thing. She wanted someone who truly knew his spirit to speak at his funeral. Someone who could speak to his devotion to family, to God, and to community. She called Sue, and Sue didn't hesitate. She immediately agreed. Her presence that day, her words, her strength, her compassion, meant more to our family than I could ever fully express. She knew exactly what to say and exactly how to say it, and exactly how to support us when we needed it most, just as she had all those years before. When we lost Sue, we didn't just lose a member of our school board. We lost a pillar of our community. We lost someone who led with dignity and grace, someone who
006carried quiet confidence, confidence that reassured others even in uncertain times, someone whose encouragement, support, steady presence shaped generations. I'd like us all to take a moment to remember Sue. Remember the encouragement she gave, that support that she offered without being asked, and that knowing hand on your shoulder when things were hard. And I'd like us to take a lesson from her, as well. In moments of disagreement, let us hear both sides, just as she did. In moments of weakness, let us carry ourselves the way Sue carried herself with empathy, with thoughtfulness, and with measured words. And in moments when we are able to help, let us do so quietly, generously, and without expecting recognition, just as she did. Dr. Sue Hollinsworth leaves behind a legacy that will continue to live on in our schools, in
007our community, and in each life she touched. May we honor her by striving to lead, to listen, and to care the way she always did. Thank you for your time. Recognitions A, Regional Science and Engineering Fair, and B is Regional Academic Competitors. All right. How do you want them? We'll go with that. >> [clears throat] >> Good morning. This is the National Honor Society. Here are your award winners for today. Yes. Kyle Steven and Sam is an honorable mention winner. We'll go with that for now. I'm a little baby. Don't go. I said I was going to cry. He was a little bit overwhelmed with the tears. Thank you for staying here with me today. Um, we are honored to be able to recognize your accomplishments. Um, the awards that we are recognizing you for,
008you we know you have put forth above and beyond effort um than what is normally accepted. The family has supported you because a lot of these academic fairs you have to work at home to make sure it is complete. So and also the families to transport the children to these academic fairs, especially when they move on to regional and to state. And we did have several move on to regional and state. So tonight we are recognizing the individuals who competed at the regional level plus individuals who competed at the state level. First is the Pickens County Young Writers. I'm not sure if anyone's here. I'd like for those students, if you were recognized for the county young writers to stand up here with Kristy. Do we have anyone? I think they're not here. So I'll
009go ahead and say their names though. Okay. These individuals um moved on to the state level and um were able to be recognized this past Friday at University of Charleston. They were Durham Mack, Harper Harper, Hubble Penelope Buzzard, Bailey Goodwin, and Kayla Dow. At the regional science fair, uh these these individuals moved on to the state science fair and placed third in the state. Grayson Gray >> If you could come here, please. And since can be placed in the state Yes, I did. They also received a pin, a square. This was honored. It is notifying you and everyone else the excellence you achieved. Okay. Faith, third place winner at the uh in science fair is Jennifer Ingram. Now, let's recognize the social studies regional participants from the state. Participants, will you all come line up
010close to Christie, whoever participated in the social studies. Hey, we have Autumn Selfridge, Elliot Selfridge, Andrew Harold, Marci Billy, Elizabeth Sharp and I know that you were our tennis partner at the school. Uh Jonah Man Audrey Evans Bailey Brown Annabelle Swan Jennifer Taylor Wait. Kendall Taylor Ryan Coker Is that before or after? Ivy Anna Hall Reina Kerr Isabelle Adorney Cambree McLaughlin Madeleine Rittenhouse And also at the state level, Cambree participated in the state level. Marcy Billy and Elizabeth Sharp placed third as partners. And Madeleine Rittenhouse placed third at the state. Yay! Get lost. You may leave. You want us to >> [laughter] >> Now on to the original level for math field day Um we had I was able to attend the regional level and students were like one point difference from each other and
011we had a couple that were at had a tie breaker where they couldn't place. And depending on where what level they scored in each >> [clears throat] >> network contest determined whether they were the person that would go on and place. So I mean our students did wonderful at the regional level. So those students are Daniel Brown Joseph Taylor >> [clears throat] >> Ashton Marvel Michael Thrill Isaac Brown Braden Ray Madelyn Red House Levi Urban Hunter Heffner Hunter Longmark Ryan Withrow Ace Gregory Eli Beasley Sarah Fanning and Levi Fields. And these students who placed in the alternate levels at the regionals were Jason Brittenhouse Eli Beasley. This is alternate regional math field day. This is 10th through 12th grade. And we have Cadence Cutler Paul Jordan Wade Garber Ramona Hardy Hannah Warner Ash Sears Gavin
012Jordan Allison Taylor and Willa Hardy and Mason Monica. >> [clears throat] >> We have who went to the state, Paul Jordan and Wade Garber. And Wade placed fifth in the state. Good job. He also got most valuable team. Okay. I did not know that. That's interesting. Great. Our next category is Battle of the Books. Uh before I share their names, we had three teams that competed. Two elementary teams and one middle school team that competed at the regional level. We had Marlinton Elementary School team place third at the regional level and we had Marlinton Middle School team place third at the regional level. It is a tough competition. I also want to say thank you to our coaches. We had Gina Hardesty as the middle school coach. We had Chrissy Tingler and Sam Gibson as
013Marlinton Elementary School coach. So thank you Sam for donating your time and volunteering to help. Aaron Doll as our Marlinton Middle School coach. The students that participated are Sadie Brown Daisy Hefner Micah Scotchie Amelia Beverage >> [clears throat] >> Annabelle Swan Abby Evans Grant Knorr Kenneth Dotson >> [laughter] >> And then for our Marlinton Elementary School team we had Alan Beverage Michael Prill Jericho Jackson Simon Scotchie 3 Jack you up. Chambers Angelisa Jordanie And for our Mountain Middle School team, we had Drake Castle Victor Dean William Go Diving >> [clears throat] >> Carter Smith and Harris Webb. You can tell them maybe they're busy but not stupid. This was good stuff. If you would like to stay, you can stay. If you would like to leave, you can leave before the next presentation. Thank you.
014Thank you and thank you for coming. Y'all got work tomorrow. Not at all. Thank you all. Thank you for coming. See y'all. That was your whole audience. I'm going to have to find your name. We lost the whole audience, didn't we? Yeah, I was talking to you the whole time. Okay. Item number five is school improvement updates. A is presentation new programs of study PCHS by Roger Griffith, interim dean for transfer and pre-professional programs New River Community and Technical College. That's about it. Roger, you're up. >> Before Before Roger gets going, before Roger gets started, I just want to say that the a couple of things to note is that we are still offering our college pathway, which is our AP pathway for all of our students. We have our general pathway, which is for
015CTE completers and programs. And we already had one dual credit associate's program in welding that he'll talk about and we're building on that opportunity for dual credits and associate's pathways. For anybody that came in late, the pathways will be laid over there on the table for you to look at. Mr. Griffith. Thank you for coming. Um we had this um we had a meeting what last week at the at the high school and then uh we've been doing this for a series of months. But in reality, when Mr. Grimes and I were talking at the the high school, I think the first time I spoke to Pocahontas County Board of Education was either the fall of 1999 or the fall of of 2000, so we were laughing about how long we have been been doing
016this, so thank you for having me. Um New River Community and Technical College is very happy and very proud to work with Pocahontas County schools. You guys have had a um tumultuous last little bit, but you've hung in with us and we've tried to do the same thing as as well. Um the state of West Virginia has Originally there was a program called Edge, which was basically you take some college you some classes in high school, mostly all in technical areas, and you got a little bit of college credit. A couple years ago they decided to pilot a project called the Level Up Program. And before when we did dual credit, there was a fee associated with it that the kids had to pay for um taking classes. And across the state what they had
017found was that dual credit and the opportunity to take classes um at even a much reduced rate was separating people out. It was becoming the a program that you people that could afford it could do it and was separating very good students from the opportunity just because they might lack funds. So the state and the legislature come together, the Department of Education, the Community Technical and College Council, and um local school boards and community colleges, and they developed a a plan that was called Level Up, which the state started to reimburse the community colleges for and the four-year institutions for the tuition and fees that the students would normally incur. And even though the fees were you relatively small, $25 per credit hour, for a lot of kids that make classes unattainable. Um the other
018thing was you one of the biggest expenses you've ever seen with a child at school was textbooks and materials that go along with that that program. They challenged the the system schools to come up with the best ways to reduce that cost for students as well. Uh one of the ways that we did at New River was we went with what's called Cengage um unlimited, which is one of the bigger publishing houses. Uh we incurred the cost for all of our students, and about 80% of our textbooks are covered under Cengage unlimited. We we bought a campus or college-wide license to help reduce that cost as well. Another thing that we do in the state promoted is what is called OER, open educational resources, which, you know, like my American government class, I use the
019Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation uh free textbook repository. And that's another way to save students money. Now, there's some things that Cengage doesn't cover, and OER is not doing right now, but that number of classes is very limited in New River, and we do everything that we can to find low-cost, you or low or cost uh materials and stuff for students. So, we began this process probably 6 months ago. Yes, we did. Thank you. >> at this point. Now, for years, um particularly uh I was looking on the wall of the superintendents and was kind of shocked about how far I remembered back, but you working with people like Tom Sanders, several of the superintendents, and your new superintendent, uh Pocahontas County used to be the model for dual credit in the in the state.
020You back when we first uh first got here, students at Pocahontas County High School could earn up to 27 to 30 credit hours. Basically, they could go in and start as sophomores. And really nowhere else in the state, with very limited counties, were we doing things like that. And so, with this new program, it's not only about getting college hours. It's about trying to get kids credentialed uh to earn you a advanced skill set, a collegiate certificate, or an associate degree before they uh graduated from high school. Um we had our commencement on Saturday evening at 6:00. And I found that it's easier to stay awake when it's in the evening than than during the morning just facing. Actually, the speeches were wonderful. And uh the event very very very well. But we had 40
021students from um two counties basically that earned their associate degrees before they left high school. They They got their degree from us before they graduated in two or three weeks from the the um the high school that they attend. What we've been working on is to do something very similar with the pathways at Pocahontas County High School to give students a chance to earn a credential so that it will help them go into the workforce or help move them along to the four-year to our programs and on to the four-year programs. The way the pathways are designed is [clears throat] you start in high school, you can come to us or depending how far you get, go on directly to a four-year institution or if you come to us, then go on to a four-year
022institution with our articulation agreements. It's seamless for the the students. The thing is and I'll give credit where credit is due, the president of West Virginia Tech at the time pointed out, he said, "You use the the dual credit level up pathways while you're still in high school, reduces the cost to you and your parents, you know, a great deal. Then you come to a you go to a community college and use the West Virginia Invest program." And if you're not familiar with that, it is a program that's a last dollar in free tuition program. Students have to fill out their financial aid forms. Uh then if they don't have money that covers their tuition and general fees, then West Virginia Invest will kick the money in. Now, there's a caveat with West Virginia Invest.
023Uh just like with always, there's no free lunch, right? There's a couple things that you have to do. And one is it has to be in a program that leads to employment that provides a living wage. At New River, about 70 70 of our programs are West Virginia Invest eligible. That's the only thing. There are two categories that are not eligible. One is general education. You and you when we have an associate of arts degree, and those are just strictly transfer programs. Um but everything most everything else is West Virginia Invest eligible. Then he said, and you got to remember the audience it was at we were having the meeting at West Virginia Tech, he goes, then you come to a four-year school like West Virginia Tech, in reality, you're only paying for two years
024of a degree, then when you get the diploma, it says WVU on it and your name. And whether you substitute that with any of the universities or any of the other four-year institutions in the state, we have very large and very wide-ranging articulation agreements with all of them. But then, not only does it save the the parent and student money, I'll never forget this. My oldest son went to Marshall and he graduated with 39 credit hours of dual credit from Greenbrier East High School. And you ever bought a used car? I say used car because you you the price now was it's like they were selling me a used car. The tuition bill with fees were $24,996. So, that whole $4 makes it sound so much cheaper than than $25,000. But that theoretically he had
025scholarships and other things that helped pay for it. And it saved me a year of pain to go to school for you. And it saved him a year of time where he could be out earning earlier being his career and those type of things. You have students, let's take an example. We eventually want to have the allied health program lead to a nursing program here. We have that program in Nicholas County. We're getting ready to start it in Braxton County this fall. Those students complete all their high school requirements by the time that they finish 10th grade. They finish all the prerequisites they need in the final courses of their high school career as 11th graders. Then they come to one of our campuses or hopefully eventually your high school. And by the time that
026they graduate high school that summer cuz the program is 13 months they um end up with their LPN >> [snorts] >> ability set for their LPN license. So they come, they uh after they finish their LPN program uh they're either 18 or 19, they're out and employable as a as a nurse. Then they a lot of them come that spring to our LPN to RN program. And that is 1 year. And so by the time they're 19 or 20 they're out as an RN making very good money. But those pathways also apply to criminal justice welding uh allied health um there's there's several varieties there. You you Your your children have the opportunity because of your board and the people that we work with and the history that we've had that they can start cutting
027those years off and the expenses off for their parents and they have the ability to um to save time and go out and earn quicker. So um you have the the pathways there uh in front of you. I will just say this, it's it's great to work with the folks up here. Yeah, I always enjoy coming up. They all you know, they always bend over backwards and try to find a way to to to make things happen. And yeah, like I said, I've been here since 1999 or or 2000. And New River slash um Bluefield State, the people I've been associated you we try to put our money where the mouth our mouth is. You we had the nursing program up here before. And you we raised $850,000 through grants for that program. You combined
028with the other money that uh we get through grants or um through special programs we've extended well over a million dollars in this in this county for our students over the last 30 years. And so we're we're proud to partner with you. We're grateful for the people that we have in attendance and if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. >> Can you explain to everybody what the dual credit means? >> I'm sorry. Um dual credit, there's two types of college credit that are earned by high school students. The first is called early entrance. You come to the college early. It's these are luckily for me, they're not hard definitions. Yeah, you know, what is it? Keep it simple, stupid. That's my I try to live my life by that that principle.
029Uh early entrance means they come to the high you know, they they don't get credit back at the high school. They come to get college credit only for a class. When it's dual credit the college and the the high school work together, the school system work together to find classes that are similar enough that they can count back and forth between um the two institutions and they get one class gets them credit both places. One of the things is the state and I completely agree with them, I'm sure you do. We don't want kids taking something that they already have taken and losing that time to to do that and then vice versa. You're going the other way. It doesn't make you make sense. You know, medical terminology is medical terminology. You know, our priority
030is if you have faculty that can be credentialed to teach a college class, then that is always our our first option. Live instruction is better, you know, no matter how good Zoom is or Teams or online. You know, your your hospital faculty in-seat are always the the best option. And then if not, then we have the ability to deliver Zoom courses in um and then we also do online courses as as well. Can I give an example? Sure, absolutely. >> For instance, the medical terminology, Mrs. Solak already teaches that. So, with our agreement, when she teaches that and takes that and she's certified to teach that with uh New River Community and Technical College, so they'll take one of our courses with one of our teachers that's qualified to do that and they'll get their
031high school graduation credit to graduate and then they will get credit for the college degree they're completing at the same time. Um uh I see also we have here uh we have the biology course and the biology lab that Mrs. Solak will be able to teach. So, we're looking at all the credentials of our teachers and seeing what they can teach that's college credit that will that they're already taking those courses. So, when I sit down and worked on this, it it was a it was a big lift to to to align the coursework. We started off with the one uh career fair that every student in the school circulated through that career fair including one of Mr. Griffith's sessions. We had people from the hospital, we had the sheriff's office there, we had the
032corrections office there. Who else do we have there? >> We brought 12 of our faculty members and and staff members from you you know, um technical faculty and allied health faculty to people that talked about uh transfer education and those type of things. It was a great day except when they had the lockdown. And they left me and one of the recruiters in the outer buildings said, "We'll take the kids back to the main building. Y'all can stay here." >> [laughter] >> And what I like what I like about it is is they get they can basically get that first year for free here. If even they the kids that are going home, they can take the basic classes. No, AP doesn't count as school credit. But we have kids that are not just what
033would your CTE kids. They'll come and take a pathway because if you look at the classes that are like in the allied health pathway, if you want to be a doctor, you're going to take some of those same courses. Or if you're going to be uh a PTA or something like that, those are in there. Kids just because they have this the name on it, kids can uh pick and choose which pathway you And uh give you another example. You don't For years we have done uh we used to do Spanish and French and German across the service area. Very few counties have people that are qualified to to teach that anymore. Um Miss Grossclose uh is doing Spanish one and two. She does four it takes two semesters of yours to equal one of
034ours. But you guys are so lucky to have that right now. You know, that's one of the biggest things that people want you know, when we go out and talk, "Can you help me do uh with foreign languages?" because they people have retired, they're not being replaced. And they go through what I guess West Virginia Virtual to do that. I'll say this, you I think on the topic of packets, Weldy, um I'll be honest with you, we love your welding students. And we give them 12 to 18 credit hours for for classes that they they take. Um one of your welding students is um I can't say his name, but from a couple years ago, uh come down to our place. Um you know, some people can just naturally weld. It don't happen very often.
035I can weld, but it's not pretty. And um this kid uh was top line. And um he was so close to completing with us. I mean, it was his last semester. You know, and he finished the welding part, but he didn't do his English and math, and didn't get his the college degree. But he also got a job making 3650 3650 an hour and $150 per day per diem. To me, that's a win. It is. To the state of West Virginia, Mike counts as a as a non-completer, but you know, that kid's changed his life right right there. So. Mr. Griffith, could you address the uh question I know it came up at one of our sessions. I think it was the morning session about students' financial aid, and if they do this, can they
036still get financial aid? The thing is, financial aid now, you know, you are getting you're getting 2 years of a degree, you without having to file your financial aid. But there are hour restrictions. If for a baccalaureate degree, if you would get, let's say, 30 hours, um you have it's time and a half of what you would take normally to get before you have to file an appeal. Most of those appeals are granted if you're close. So, I mean, I have four degrees and three minors from as an undergraduate. I was a professional student, and um I only graduated with 163 hours after uh 5 years. Um there might have been some football in there at some point. Um nobody needs 21 hours of PE credit. Um but like uh >> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah.
037You do things they [clears throat] clean normally wouldn't do now, but in reality like for us if they finished or if they come to us and they have 30 credit hours, they still have 60 hours which is the exact amount of an associate degree and those classes that they're taking they're generally as they're going to be in any program that they go to no matter where. English 101 is English 101 no matter uh where you go. So you know, there we and we've been doing this for 5 or 6 years with Level Up and having this this graduate and we've never had one come back and say that they have transferred this year because of it. And we're having questions for Mr. Green. Yeah, you you had an open house didn't you like fifth I
038think it was the fourth. We had an open house on the fourth. We had one in the morning for people that worked in the evening and we had one in the evening for folks that worked in the morning. I think we had 28 um people for the evening session and I it was kind of hard to count. There was probably 20-some parents in the morning and then probably another gang of of students and several of the board members were there in attendance. Oh. I just like to say Roger has worked with this county a long time. Back whenever the name that I thought everyone would be familiar with Roger Trusler got a lot of things involved in Pocahontas County Schools. If you ever met Roger, you knew he never let let it go. I know
039it. Probably one of the best grant writers in the state. Absolutely. And worked really hard with the community New River to get a lot of lot of these programs set up at the time. He was him and uh Mr. Sanders were key in getting the nursing program up here for that 5 or 6 7 years that we we did it. Um and we we truly appreciate working with you guys. The the staff and the faculty have always been uh super easy to work with. Um having access to them as well as is important. Um we work with 10 other counties and I can honestly say there's very few counties that match what you guys do as far as access and and willingness to work and I wouldn't say that if it wasn't true because I
040don't have to. And but we found that the to be the case again and we're we're looking forward to to doing that. Well, we want to say thank you for coming. And we'll soon thank you for everything you do for the students of Pocahontas County. Thank you. The other thing I will say this, usually on average you don't think about it because they got small graduating groups. But we'll have between 70 80 70 and 60 to 80 students every year that come from Pocahontas County. And the county commissioner's support of Wheeling University is a tremendous benefit to to you guys. Because you know, we all know that high-speed internet is not what it should be and has not been what it should be. So those students can come and they do come to the Wheeling
041University and they do their student services part or they can they do their homework or those type of things. In the past we partnered with the library system within in the area. They've always been great to to uh proctor test, um you allow students to use Wi-Fi. You I I know that they've even opened several times early to let students take classes there. So your county's committed and we we truly appreciate that. All right. Great. I'm excited to see the next three to four years and see what happens, you know. Gives a lot of kids a lot of opportunities. It does. We're going to build it back up to where we once were and we'll lead the state again. Well, I got three or four million more years left. I don't know if we can
042do another >> [laughter] >> 25 or 26. But thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. B is regional academic competitors. Um, B is discussion attendance and data updates under school improvement. We're re-reading. Am I reading something wrong? >> Yes. Number five. I'm on five, but okay. >> Right here is where we Got it. Number five is school improvement updates. A is presentation of new programs of study PCHS by Roger Griffin. We just read that, didn't we? We're on six consent agenda items. Oh, discussion attendance data updates. Got it. Yes. So, >> [laughter] >> I want to update you on our chronically absenteeism. Ms. Dunlap was sick today and she had to leave, so I have to I'm stepping in for her. Um, and I love charts and graphs. That's That's the way I
043communicate. I think a good info graph is better than a page of words. So, here what we have in front of us, I pulled the chronically absentee rate for students as of earlier today and divided it up by school, so you can see the number of students that's been chronically absent or percentage of students that's been chronically absent. You can see the percentage of students that needs attention and then the percentage of students that don't need attention or have not been chronically absent by school. So, the red is number chronically absent. The golden golden rod, I guess we'll say, is the percent that need attention and then the blue is the percent that does not need attention. So, I want to tell you what the percent that needs attention, what chronically absent means. So, we
044are looking at students by the number of days that we have attended that are in jeopardy of missing 10% of the school year. So, those students can be You can put interventions into place such as a stat meeting or their court meeting, and those students can come off of the chronically absentee list that are in the golden rod because as we get more days and they attend more days, their attendance rate goes up and they become less chronically absent. Does that make sense? I know exactly what you Okay, so next we'll look at I pulled a series of reports that I thought was interesting today. So, this is the chronically absentee rate by grade level. So, we can see that our seniors they're struggling a little bit. So, when I look at data, I like
045to drill down to the point that we can see, you know, within a school, within a grade level, where do we need to focus? So, we can see that 9th through 12th grade have the greatest amount of students, the greatest percentage of students that are chronically absent. Pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, second grade for kindergarten and second grade have in fourth grade doing great jobs and fifth grade, I think fifth grade's doing really well because Miss Griffith's getting hit by a pie next time. Is that correct? >> [laughter] >> Mr. Mr. Williams took a pie in the face for attendance last time and now it's going to be Miss Griffith's turn. >> [laughter] >> Um So, but um we can see that some schools are doing intervention and that we have some areas to improve on.
046We can see at the high school we have more students chronically absent than students that are not in jeopardy. Basically is what I wanted you to see from this. So, then I drilled down and I say, "Well, what's happened in the last 30 days?" You know, where are we missing the most school? And as we look across the ebb and flow of this uh line graph, the points here, we can see that last Friday we had 111 students absent. And Miss Hammonds and I have already brainstormed about what could be happening on last Friday that caused 1/8 of the student population to be absent. So, we think that's maybe the high school took a bowling trip. They took most of the school. So, we need to look at some maybe some coding issues there to
047make sure that they were coded on a field trip. And then when we had 112 absent, I believe we had an early out day that day, Miss Hammonds. So, we know well that we have that when we have an early out day students tend to not come to school. So, as we start to look at this, we can see there are times that students are attending and then there's times that we have a high absentee rate in terms of numbers. Now, I'm showing you all this from the county level. The schools have all this data from the school level and they can drill down to the individual student level and see which students are actually absent, but that wouldn't be wouldn't be appropriate for us to look at individual student level on that. So, in
048looking at chronically absenteeism, um we have improved significantly. I felt that it would be time for us to look at a a longitudinal report for infractions, misconduct infractions that we have over a series of time. So, I pulled this up and I highlighted the green is this year. Um and then we have four previous years so that you can see there. So, this year you can see that we've had some felonies in our school system that we've had to deal with and you had to deal with those cuz those were expulsion hearings. We've had some battery, which is 13 fights. We've had defacing of school property, 11 incidents. Harassment and bullying, 23. possession and use of substance such as tobacco 21, which is down from last year. So, that's a celebration that it's down from
049last year. Um Uh let's go on down to the uh disruptive dis- disrespectful conduct. I thought this was interesting when I was looking at the data today. Even though we're already slightly up cuz that's the end of the year last year's 310, it's 321 this year, but 2 years ago get 740 and then the year before that 522. So, we have improved significantly over the previous span of uh disciplinary referrals or misconduct referrals. And then uh habitual violation of the rules, we're doing significantly better compared to last year and all the previous years. Um insubordination, we're up a little bit there, but again down from the previous the year before the previous year. Uh physical fight without injury, we've had 14. Profane language, obscene gestures, we've had 37. So, right now we're tied with the
050end of the year last year, but the previous year was still less than half of that. So, we do have some significant celebrations. Um disruptive conduct, um again that one came back up. So, generally I just wanted you to see that where we are with our misconduct and why is this important? This is important because it's loss of learning time. It's loss of instructional time uh for the teachers. It's loss of administrative leadership time for our principals. When they are dealing with these types of things, they are not out in the classroom providing our teachers feedback. When our teachers are dealing with disruption in their classroom, they are not delivering instruction to all the students. So, it is important that we look at this data and we try to hone in on what the targets
051are. Earlier in the year when we were on state of emergency for special education and as a county, one of the things that was mentioned that pervasively throughout the county was procedures and routines, school-wide procedures and routines, classroom procedures and routines, hallway procedures and routines. And Mr. Anderson and Ms. Burns has been out there working with our trainings, making sure those are implementing. We've had consultants come in and provide some feedback to our teachers about that. Um we still have growth that we need to do, but we have certainly improved over where we were. And do you have any [clears throat] questions on that? Okay. It's a lot. So, if you're open to some I want I don't want to interrupt you or whoever's next, but I want to I want to go back to
052the new program study at PCHS with Mr. Griffin. Okay. Okay. Can we do that? Sure. Okay. I mean, for president, is that Yeah, we can. Well, so we talked >> a question. We can certainly do our best to We um I mean, we talked about we're talking about CTE, right? Correct? The CTE courses are built into these The technical college is an extended branch of CTE for West Virginia. So, there's the all the CTE completer courses are integrated into those college degrees. So, they they they overlap. >> Okay. >> And that's the coursework that I was I had been working on. >> All right. Okay, so I've got that. Well, what about I mean, I don't I don't see ProStart or the forestry program or Mr. Taylor's uh carpentry. Is that Are those the programs
053still with us? Yes. ProStart and Mr. Taylor's and the forestry and all that still? Yes. Remember at the beginning I said we have what's called the AP track or the college readiness track. All right. At the end of 10th grade, all students look at their pet plans, which is planning their 11th and 12th grade year, and they either say to themselves, "I want to go and be a CTE completer and get governor workforce credentials, which that's the general education CTE pathway. Or I would like to go the dual credit pathway Okay. and also those are two new These are two new CTE pathways that are also dual credit with the state technical college, and they can take those or they evaluate and say, "Hey, I want to go to an Ivy League school. I want
054to go out of state to school. I want to go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, I don't know uh whatever school business is, and they say, "I'm taking all the AP courses. I'm doubling up on math. I'm doubling up on science." Uh which is something that my son did. My My youngest son did that. He doubled up and took all the maths, took all the sciences cuz he was a pre-med honor student athlete at WKU. Yeah. All of my my two previous students, which also are college graduates and have master's degrees, and they were completers in JROTC, small animal science, large animal science cuz our daughter wanted to go to school to be a veterinarian. So, she was on that track. So, it's when you work with your counselor, you decide which of those three
055tracks you're going to be on and plan your 11th and 12th grade year. Okay. All right. I don't I don't think New River offers forestry. Uh forestry program. It Glenville does. Glenville and Western University does. I know that, but I I'm not sure New River's got something like that today. I know I think they have something it's just not called forestry, but the forestry Yeah, they've got the introduction or or something that you could transfer to. So Did I miss anything there? I mean we have a What is uh We have the forestry program. We have sit ProStart. We have Mr. Taylor's carpentry. What else was We have FFA. FFA. And you got build your own too. Well, grow your own. I think of Think of these programs with the grow your own educational program.
056Think of all of these programs Yeah. as grow your own. And how we came up with these programs specifically is I met with the educational leaders in our community. I met with the sheriff. I met I joined Mr. Collins on the uh at the correction center and did a tour of that. I met with the hospital and we talked about what is the greatest need in our area cuz ultimately Sam, the what we want to do is we want to keep our students at home so they don't have to leave our county. And these are jobs that we have that are unfilled. I'm okay. I just I just didn't I just didn't We hadn't been talking about, you know, ProStart those kind of things and I wanted to bring that Thank you, sir. Thank you.
057That was a great question. Item number six, consent agenda items. Number A is approval of the agenda. B is payment of bills subject to additions, deletions, or other changes prior to the board meeting. A is payment of vendor listing $60,098.97. Payment of the P-card $16,309.91. Extra duty pay for April 2026 is $28,732.76. D is bank reconciliation for March 2026 grant awards, budget adjustments and D is budget transfers and supplements subject to additions, deletions, or other changes prior to the board meeting. Do we have any questions? Any additions, I should say, to the agenda before we do that? Yes, I would like to add two additions to the personnel agenda. We're going to request a transfer of Shannon Alderman. She's a third grade teacher at Hillsboro Elementary to the teacher of college and career readiness/related arts
058and interventionist at Hillsboro Elementary. We are also requesting a transfer of Dana Cutlip from social worker to itinerant counselor for Pocahontas County schools. The schools that she will cover will be Hillsboro, Pocahontas County High School, and Greenbank Elementary/Middle School. Thank you. Say that again, which school? She will cover Hillsboro, Okay. Pocahontas County High School, and Greenbank Elementary/Middle School. I need a motion. Stonewall Jackson. Mr. McCombs made the motion. Do I have a second? I second it. Mr. McCombs seconds that. Any other questions? We have to for the extra duty payout. Okay. Why? I got a question about that. How come that extra duty pay is high this time? Mostly trips, I would bet it. What is it? >> [clears throat] >> Trips? >> It's trips, but I would like to know if you can notate
059on those who pays for all that. Like, if it's a trip, if uh the school has an account that pays for it or the students pay for it themselves. Can that be notated somewhere where we know that where those funds are coming from? What? Because if you look at that, that's a lot of money. And if you take that every month, that could be one or two positions in the school system. If the school if the board is paying for that, but if you can now take that is coming from something else that would better explain where the money comes from. Well, for for field trips that are required buses, we do pay for the buses and the transportation costs, but we get reimbursed for transportation costs from the West Virginia Department of Education at
06095%. So, even though it may seem like a large number for those transportation costs, when we turn in our mileage, is it turned in monthly, Sarah? It's turned in monthly. Get it. It's 2 years out. 2 years out. So, it's it's 2 >> years out. It's every 2 years whenever >> get reimbursed for that, but it's if there's a reimbursement process that we Well, how that works is you're on you're on a schedule. So, you get money every year. Yes. But, it's 2 They go back 2 years prior. So, 2 years prior, you get money for this year, and then 2 years from now, you get money for them, you know. But, you get it every year. But, it goes back to 2 years before. That makes sense? >> It does. Okay. Yeah, good job.
061>> Plus, it's a tracking of camp through fundraiser. I mean, each fundraiser thing has a Most every field trip has a fundraiser attached to it, right? Mhm. Well, some It depends on the fund It depends on what the trip is. >> Pocahontas, they're that that bill is paid separately. And the the school trips, since the kids pay, a lot of times that's for their entry fee into whatever they're going on. Number one. And then they pay a little bit extra for the bus. That's why I just wondered if you could separate those. You also on your extra duty have several of your Learning by the Bell, your after-school program, you have that on there. They're significant, and then you have some coaches that are paid here. Right, so Wait, but the Bell is a grant
062we got, am I correct? It's a quarter of a million dollars a year. Yeah. Yeah. And we have to spend it We have to spend our first quarter of a million dollars by the end of September. Or you don't get to spend And we're really stressed out about it. >> [laughter] >> Because we had anticipated more students attending after school. And attendance doesn't affect our next year's student list. Yes. So. So, and I and I have one more question about talking if if we if I may, can I have a moment? Yes, please. Uh You mentioned Mrs. Cutler, bless her heart, for stepping up and becoming our counselor. Which is great. And then we skipped over Miss Griffin, the interim dean of for transfer and pre-professional program programs. Well, cuz it We're just This is
063just additions. We're We're We're just talking about We're just doing the additions to the agenda. to the agenda. Oh, we're not to two personnel matters No. Ah, well, we're That's on number five. We need to I don't think it's cheap. We need to We need to switch to I don't think it's cheap. That's Roger Griffin. That's not Miss Griffin. That's right. That's Mr. Roger. Oh, yeah. Good thing Good thing you spoke up. All right. All right, let's move Let's move on and get this done. Let's move on and get this done. Okay. Any other questions about the item number six, the consent agenda items? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carried. Number seven is personnel matters. Do I have a motion? Send me. Mr. McComb made a motion. Do
064I have a second? I'll second it. Mr. McNab seconded. This time I request we go into executive session over personnel matters. But Mr. McNab has made the motion to go into executive session. Do I have a second? Second. Mr. McComb seconded. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. We will go into executive session at 7:03. Do you want to go to my office or you want them to Do you want to go to my I don't mind if we walk down. >> We'll just go to my office. I'll go to your office. >> Mhm. >> I call second and all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Motion carries. We come out of executive session at 7:23. Okay, personnel, Holly. Maybe pull your speaker a little closer, Holly. Thank you. I'm going
065to go over the job personnel agenda for May the 11th, 2026. Professional recommendations, the resignation of Laura Campbell as substitute teacher for the Department of County Schools, effective May the 5th, 2026. Extracurricular recommendations, the resignation of Rebecca Petite as assistant basketball coach for girls at Red Bank Elementary Middle School, effective April the 24th, 2026. And other recommendations is James Cheney request for intermittent FMLA leave retroactive effective March the 30th, 2026 to June the 30th of 2026. Any questions? Yeah, you didn't read the other two. We added it to the agenda. Dana is Dana. Shannon Alderman. Request the transfer of Shannon Alderman from teacher third grade at Hillsboro Elementary School to teacher of college readiness, relate arts, and interventionist. And then the request to transfer of Dana Cutlip from social worker to itinerant school counselor for
066Pocahontas County School. Okay. Any questions? No, I haven't seen it. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries. Number eight is superintendent updates, general updates, long Longitudinal data. Coaching data, pupil status of accreditation reports, balances, scorecard review, LSC schedule review. So, I'm going to have Miss Hammons, if you could blow that up a little bit, Miss Hammons, for us. This is uh maybe down Oh, perfect. Perfect. So, um there's been quite a bit of chatter about coaching positions in Pocahontas County Schools. So, I thought we would go back and review pay for coaches, and we would review positions that we've had in Pocahontas County Schools, and I would like to upfront this with we haven't had an influx or a tremendous growth of athletes. So, our athletes have either remained
067the same or slightly decreased crease in our sports programs. So, we're not doubling. If we had 20 players, now we have 40 players. That's not the case. So, we've stayed pretty much consistent or less. So, let's start off with the athletic director. Last year, they were paid $5,000. This year, they were paid $6,000. Head football coach last year, the previous 2 years was paid $3,000. This year paid $4,000. Assistant football coaches, we had three paid positions. The previous 2 years, they were paid $750. This year, they were paid $1,100 each. In addition to that, you had two volunteer coaches. And we had to transition those over to be covered by the board insurance to dollar coaches. So, we have a total football coach staff of 2 3 4 5 6. Six coaching staff for the
068football team. None of that's changed. We haven't cut any positions. They've all remained consistent. The golf coach golf coach was all volunteer. They were paid this year $500 cheerleading coach went from 1,500 to 1,800. Then we had a volunteer coach before this year, they're paid $500 and we had one dollar coach. The EMT athletic trainer, which we didn't have. We almost didn't even start football season when I got here. President Grimes actually had to help me beg someone to take over the position to even start and I had to file a 3-day extension with the WVSSAC to even start football. So, we started football after much recruiting and they were paid, you can see their paid consistently has increased. Head basketball coach boys went from 2,475 the previous 2 years to 4,000 this year, had
069basketball girls, same exact thing, we saw increase in that. Assistant basketball coach boys, their pay increased from 750 to 1,100. I was asked for an assistant basketball coach cuz it wasn't posted. Wasn't posted. These are 2 years prior to the superintendent arriving. That job was not posted and not needed. I created it as a dollar coach. So, that's one position that I've created since I got here. All the green positions are positions that have been added on. So, same with the assistant girls coach. In 23-24, we had a volunteer coach. It was a 1-year contract only. In 24-25, the position was posted and never filled, so there wasn't a coach. And then in 25-26, there was no coaching contract from the previous year. I didn't create a position this year, but there was no position
070there to post without board permission. We're asking for it. Head volleyball coach, assistant volleyball coach, when I first got here as a collective board, we created that team and created those positions. That That's brand new positions that were created this year under this board. We had a immense discussion about that and that was the first fundraising discussion we had cuz we had a team fundraising before they were actually a team, if you recall that situation. Um so, then we have the head track, went from 562.50 to 1,000. The assistant 562.50 to 500. Then we have multiple volunteer coaches that turned into $1 coaches. We had the head boys athletic seasonal coordinator. You can see where those um that position increased. The assistant track coach boys, that looks like a 62.50. That's just what I saw.
071So, maybe it's different. Then we have two assistant $1 coaches, our head basketball coach, again, head basketball baseball coach went from 1125 to $4,000 increase in their pay this year. We had a volunteer coach that went to $1 and I created another volunteer coach that I added on for $1. So, that's three or four positions I've created in coaching since I got here and every coach has seen a pay increase since I have gotten here. So, then we go down. We have the soccer and the rest of the orange is just the $1 coaches. I think we go down here to the head girls basketball coach. We had one that was not posted. It was not posted. I posted it for $1 coach. Then we go to the head boys basketball coach, Marlinton Middle School,
072volunteer volunteer $1 coach. The cheerleading coach, not posted. Those the cheerleading I want to say I was severely disappointed when I went to the middle school games and there were no cheerleaders. I mean, I would love to have a cheerleading coach. I would love to have cheerleaders at the middle school, but there's there's not a team. I asked why and they said cuz they didn't have a coach. They could, though. They could. If I'm willing to let them have a team, a cheerleading team. Um and then all of these positions down through here, we are looking at the Pocahontas County Board of Education used to hire and regulate and oversee the youth basketball league, which under WVSSAC is not a responsibility of the superintendent of schools. So, we have a strong youth basketball league that
073is managed by the community now. So, that's what you're seeing there with all those elementary positions. So, whatever's going on with youth basketball is not directly related to the hiring process for Pocahontas County schools. So, if we go on down to the bottom of the chart, I also want to note something else that I have done for the sports teams in Pocahontas County. Prior to me, they paid for they paid for no subs now. They pay for no substitute subs. So, prior to me arriving, they paid for the driver that went on the trip, they paid for the substitute that had to drive the driver's regular route, and then they had to pay for any extra duty contract. Prior to me arriving. This year, I met with Sarah and I said, "Sarah, that's a little
074bit extreme for our teams to be able to take a bus. Let's make it more affordable. They can still pay for the driver that has to take the trip. They pay for that, which all athletics does. Uh my husband coached for 16 years. I know exactly how athletics works. I was an athletic mom for 16 years. Now, I understand athletics very very clearly. So, they don't have to pay for the sub that's driving the driver's route, and they don't have to pay for the extra duty contract. So, to be clear to anyone that's listening, no sporting positions has been cut. Everybody's getting paid more money, and the teams are keeping more of their fundraising money. So, whatever myths or rumors or questions, cuz I'm being pummeled with questions. I'm like, "Let's do this. Let's go
075back and do all the research. Here's the chart. Here's what we know, and here's what's going on with athletics." So, at this point in time, I will be willing to entertain any questions from any board member about the coaching chart. Thank you for the job you're doing. So so okay so let's talk about the volunteer the $1 coaches for this one moment. So the the coaches do they submit do the coaches submit their wants in the form of $1 coaches or do they how does that how do those guys get created? Are they do they go through the same application as the other coaches do? So here's how we get $1 volunteer coaches. You had volunteer coaches. Right. >> The WVSSAC rule says there's no such thing as a volunteer coach. So we transition those
076coaches into $1 coaches to be compliant with insurance regulation and law. >> So they're technically paid. They're paid $1 which makes them covered by grim insurance for what the the the Pocahontas County school system. >> Okay. Uh the guidance that I have put out on coaches is that unless you increased your athletics right? You've had you've had an an uh influx of people that wants to like Mr. Burns gets 15 more players that wants to play football. Right. Okay? Then you're going to maintain the same coaching staff because that's the coaching staff you've had for the previous years. So there's no reason to change your coaching staff that's been working because you haven't added any athletes to add coaching staff. Right. So all of those were there and if they have a special thing let's
077say that the baseball team wants a pitching coach. Okay, hypothetically. Hypothetically that's a need out there. People are tearing their shoulders. They're not swinging correctly. They have poor stance and poor posture. I know all this from T-ball. Go go get it tiger. >> [laughter] >> I mean, I've been watching T-ball a little bit lately with my grandson, so I know a little bit about how you're supposed to stand and stuff now. But, hypothetically, let's say they want to uh a pitching coach or a batting coach. >> Right. Then the process for that is to go to the principal of that school and to say, "We don't have any more athletes. We have this data on injury. We need this particular dollar coach added. Will you ask the superintendent for that coaching position?" The principal sends
078me a proposal. I look over it and I put it on the board agenda for the board members to look at and decide if they want to approve it or not. And that's what I did with the volleyball coaches and that's how we got that volleyball team. But, it has to come from the principal. We can't have random people in the community or random teachers emailing me and saying, "Add a coach." It comes from the principal. The principal is the same person at the school as The principal is to the school as the superintendent is to the county. All right. So, it So, there is a checks and balance. It goes through the principal and then through your desk and then we vote ultimately. Yes. All right. Now, is this is this can is this
079This is our policy or is this state policy? Is I mean, how does it Does this way we do it here? This is our play. I'm going to uh Are you talking about adding adding staff members? Yeah, just like we just talked about just right now. Sure, that's how it works in any county. When my husband wanted an assistant wrestling coach, he went to his principal and said, "Amy, Ms. Perkins, whatever he said to her, I don't know. Ms. Perkins, I have 20 wrestlers. I had seven last year. They can be on four different mats. I need to add an assistant coach because I cannot cover all this." And she said, "Mr. Williams, I'm going to talk to the superintendent." And the superintendent talked Amy talked to the superintendent, and I have no cuz I
080was in the county office at time, and the superintendent put it on the agenda. The board had a lengthy discussion about it, and then added a wrestling coach. That's the process. First, you will see it. Thank you. I appreciate it. And you're right, that was a hot topic, and and I'm glad you clarified that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Anybody else have any questions? Any questions? No, I heard it all explained several months ago. All right. I think the biggest problem is is they don't watch the board meetings. So, they don't realize it, and then one person blows it away, and then you got Facebook warriors to jump on the on the bandwagon, and they don't realize, "Hey, they've actually added coaches and added money to the to our athletic teams." And I have
081to give this board credit. You guys approved Sarah help me with this number. That raise to the coaches was It was approved before I got here, but I implemented it. Was it approved in May or June, or is that correct, Sarah? Well, I was on the board one time when we had to reduce the coaches. But, coaches are making more money than they've ever made. >> They are now, but there was a time when we were we had to reduce that amount of money. You know, but And teams are keeping more money than they've ever kept. >> because it come down to whether we wanted to pay the coaches a full salary or or cut a teacher. It's what it come down to, and at that point, we valued the teacher. So, we cut the
082coaches in half. I would like to throw something out there later for future. Uh and I've thought about it and talked to a lot of the the old coaches that have retired in the after county and everything, and I would like for the county at some point in time to to have a policy on hiring head coaches, especially at the high school. Whether it goes down to the middle schools or not, but I think that way if they they would have to be approved by the board, the people that were going to do it would have to be approved by the board. And I mean, what was going to What's the word I'm looking for? Uh on a hiring committee. Yeah, you have to pick three people from the county, northern, central, and southern. And
083that they would all have an athletic background. But that That's something I've been wanting, but Well, >> I mean, I I am going to tell you that we have to revise our head coaching positions. So, since it come up, we have our offering the embedded PE credit this year. And that embedded PE credit has a form that has to be filled out by the head coach and says that students attend got their 60 hours. And they have to keep attendance, they have to keep participation, and they have to turn that in to the school guidance counselor for us to award their PE credit. Now, this has fallen on my plate in the last 2 weeks that we have a plethora of students that thought they were getting that embedded PE credit, and we don't have
084one coaching evaluation form turned in yet. So, we have to go back and be retroactive with that. Now, that at the beginning of the school year rested with the school principal to do that. So, now that that either that wasn't communicated to the coaches by the athletic director in the school principal, I don't know where the breakdown was, but now when we post head coaching positions, um completing the paperwork for students to get that embedded credit PE credit will have to be part of their job. When did this stuff go away? Because it used used to mean I was an assistant coach for years at the high school and I kept daily records. That was part of my job. We don't know that the coaches don't have it. We just know it hasn't been turned
085in because I found out about this last week. I had to go I went to the the budget conference with the chief school business officers to make sure that Sarah and I are on the same page and looking at how we're coding things and making sure our budget is is correct because we don't want to end up like Hancock County. So we're managing our stuff very closely and carefully. So I did not get back until Friday night late night. Today's my first day back at work. I've got to I've got to work with Ruth Mrs. Bland and see where the breakdown is and make sure that we can get this form for our students to get their picture. So how many you got you got your credit plus what the big thing we was told
086was go to the athletic banquet you get your letter. Yeah. Sew on your jacket. I mean that was get your letter. Yeah, I don't work I guess we just They won't do this letter to We're working on it. One day at a time Mr. McMath one day at a time. Okay. Anything else? No, I just wanted to make sure I covered that cuz Mr. Gibson had asked me about that several Oh. Oh, one I did want to share the new dashboard with you. This is an amazing dashboard in case you haven't seen it and I'm real excited about it cuz I love some graphics. Chrissy, can we make it a little bit bigger? So this is our accountability dashboard for the state of West Virginia and if you're in red, you're in trouble basically. And
087if you're in orange, you're almost in trouble. If you're in green, you're doing a great job and if you're in yellow, you're on you can either be going either way. You could be going to green or you could be going to orange. So you have the West Virginia state map down there and if you click on Pocahontas County Schools, um it changes our data for Pocahontas County schools. And when you go up Yes. Yes, just Yes. So, you can see from the last year, and I've gone over this multiple times, you can see what areas we were fully accredited in, and you can see that we are in red, intensive intervention for um attendance. >> Attendance. We were on needs assistance, if you look down there at to county operations for special education. So, for
088us to move forward and be a fully operational, and you can see up there at the top, you see up there where I have the county status state of emergency. So, when you're on state of emergency and you have red or yellow or orange areas, you have to improve those areas. You have to grow. And if you can go, I think we were on We were uh doesn't show in here. It says meet requirements, but um county board of education members effectiveness operations uh when Mr. President Grams and I uh met with uh Ms. Kryner and Mr. Kelly our LSCs was an area that we needed to improve because they were not functioning appropriately. And what that means is that us That was last year. So, there's where we were in 2024. So, that's that
089shows all the areas that I have that I worked on to improve or that we have worked on to improve. Uh and we went from support to intensive intervention in the education, which brings me to the last thing on here, which is the LSCs. LSCs have to be public presentations. So, those public presentations we did not have the agendas and minutes to submit last year. So, I just wanted to remind everybody that we have LSC's on June 3rd and June 10th. The June 3rd will be at the high school for Green Bank of Pocahontas County High School, and then June 10th will be at Marlinton Middle School, and it'll be Hillsboro, Marlinton Middle, and Marlinton Elementary. So, those will be public this year to help us meet that criteria. And the dashboard will be updated
090at the end of the end of this year. Hopefully, it'll say not on state of emergency, which we know that we've improved a lot. What else? And that's everything. Uh number eight is old business. We don't have nine. Number 10 is new business, approval of fundraisers. Uh you all want to read all them. I guess I'm going to need a motion. So moved. Mr. McCown made a motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Mr. McNabb seconded. Read all them, and let me know what you if we need to if there's anything wrong, we need to pull out one and vote on it separate. Uh there was one on there that didn't have >> That's not part of it. It's not? It's a trip to the teacher. It's out of town trip. It's a trip
091to the teacher. Any questions? Is Is this all contingent upon um the population people that come here in enrollment? Actually, uh Mrs. Burns can address that. Uh Miss Burns, you want to talk any about the the summer programs, and I think she did have like a little uh she might have a slide or two that she can address that. Any questions? I'll go ahead and share. for summer programs. Um, right now, we have um three opportunities that we have planned or collaboratively planned. >> [laughter] >> One is Brainways and Sunrays, which is geared toward our elementary students. And um then we have 15 team enrichment activities, which are going to be a variety of activities offered during the month of July. And we also have a friendship with WVU Extension supporting Energy Express. The locations
092and schedules, we do have two sites, Greenbrier Elementary and Marlinton Elementary, that will be providing half-day programs. We which we will also have a feeding program at those two sites. We will offer a satellite site at Hillsboro depending on students who do not possibly need the literacy or numeracy cut scores. And this will be small group intervention and it'll be scheduled as needed. Um there going to be a couple of options of how families can apply through the paper application, online application. Again, meals will be included at Marlinton Elementary and Greenbrier and there'll be limited bus transportation. Is this paid for through the grant that you and Kristen >> Some of them are paid through the grant. Others we have some federal funds set aside because due to House Bill 3035, we have to provide
093an extended opportunities, learning opportunities for students who do not meet literacy or numeracy cut scores. And that's for kindergarten through third grade. And you the board approved of about 6 weeks ago the Energy Express contract. So you've already approved the contract the board's already approved the contract for Energy Express. Yes. Um and then we also will have some possible feeding. We haven't uh narrowed down exactly what we're going to be offering, but the idea is that um our LDB community, which are the teachers we uh employ throughout the year at contract or after school activities, they talked about STEM or STEAM, art, drama, and then Spanish and pottery. Yes. >> [clears throat] >> Uh if you have any questions, you can contact me. Um and just a little highlight of our summer meal program, again
094Plaza Elementary and Greenbank. We also are working with Youth Health, and they can those students can eat through the milk program. Uh and the milk program is open to all children ages 18 and under, but they can get a new sign-up sheet. Breakfast and lunch. Uh this Thursday we have invited some community organizations that provide summer programming. Uh we met with them last year, and they were able to share all of their wealth of ideas and opportunities. They're going to help such as FRN, um Parks and Recreation, those organizations plus many more. We're going to be meeting Thursday. Christie will meet with them and Christie will then in turn share that information out through our website. Um so the flyer uh very similar to the one to this if not this flyer will go home
095with students. Um so we can print that for every single student from high school down um that is eligible and send that definitely. And then we designed a web page that's going to be published. Um we we always put our own summer programming on here. So the flyer that we send home, but in addition to that, um any flyers that agencies give us that we that they want to share with our students will put on here so that they can get that information out to their students frequently. We'll put all of our summer programs on there. But, most of to address your question, Mr. Floyd, most of that is going to be grant funded and some of that. And based on we will have student based on student enrollment. So, what we did as a
096collective team, all of us got together, we talked about the organization and the postings that's here that we need. And then the primary facilitator of all things summer will be Ms. Burns. She is taking that on and her team, Ms. Burns, Ms. Hammonds, everybody has a role and we've all talked about our roles and responsibilities. So, I feel like it's going to be I just love the brainwaves and sunrays. I love it. Energy Express is always a good one. Yes. Anybody have any other questions about this? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Motion carries. If you could question. Yes. Yeah, I'm going to motion. You want to know who to give it to? No. Mr. Holmes made the motion and I think she made the second it. Okay, board members remarks, Mr. Gifton.
097You got to do the policies, dude. You don't we been here. You got to do the policies. Yeah. This one is Which one is it? Hold on. Hold on a second. She might have watched it. Which one is it? 150 kids one week we talked about. I'll put it on the next agenda and get all all chaperones listed. If you just want to pass it down, I'll have I'll make sure that Ollie gets it. Okay. So, let the record show that we're pulling out the Green Bank Elementary Middle School trip to the High Trampoline Park in Bridgeport scheduled for June the 10th, return to June the 10th. It has 160 on the trip, but we do not have all the chaperones listed, and we need to have that input on the next agenda, please, Ollie.
098Will it be Will it be on the agenda to approve Can we approve Do we have time to approve it? >> We got May 10th. >> that question, Mr. Gibson. We have time to approve it. Are there any other questions before we go to board members remarks? Mr. Gibson. Um Yeah, I got a couple things that we haven't talked about yet. And um Okay, so we talked about the coaching policy, and I appreciate that. But, thanks for clearing that up. That's That's been a big thing. And we And I'm glad to see that our CTE program is doing better, you know, with your new implementations. I'm glad that uh those are not all existing programs are still there. Thank you very much. Um Here's one from the peanut gallery to me is is the February
0993rd The minutes from February 3rd are still missing from our website. What Is that something that can be fixed up? I mean Ollie, would you like to Are the minutes up? So, they're they're on here now? Okay. Thank you very much. That's great. Thank you very much. Um Here's one that we haven't talked about. Um and I want to circle back around is the We never really got a chance to hash this out again is Mr. Sizemore, the Sizemore policy. If And then what is the policy number on that? What what are we looking at here? That's the Hope Scholarship policy. Okay, right. That's it right here. So this is it right here. This is what you gave us 2 weeks ago, right? >> No, this is not it. This is correct. I don't want
100to call that Sizemore policy. What is what what is >> Yeah, let's not call it that. >> Let's not do that. Let's not there. It's called the Hope Scholarship Program policy. It's policy number 2371. 2371. Okay, thank you. 2371. You know, I want to that. And look at back of my notes on that. We had several points of interest from the from the public about that. Was one um Where did we get the $700 $750 value that we charge that was Where did that number come from? So I'm going to ask Miss Hamilton to tell us how much how how we divided out and get that number. Thank you. Hope Scholarship is granted and is divided by four which is 752.48. So it's actually 752.48. >> What's the Generally because the Hope Scholarship changes every
101year. So that's why the policy says 1/7 and not a number. Okay. All right. So So that's something that we arrived at. Is that this is is this our policy? This is our determined that's our value, right? We determine it based on the number of courses that we have. That's what we had a seven-period day, so we did 1/7 for a course. Okay. All right. So that means that like And and and so I guess that we decided that um it doesn't matter what in the grade period that the student applies for this $750 grant or this we we're still going to keep it at 750, right? We keep it at 750 for consistency, but more importantly, we have one chief school business officer. And she does all the bill Can you want to explain
102what it works looks like, Sarah? Sure. Bill and I create Uh Miss Turn that Miss Hamilton, turn that towards you so that Thank you. On your Hope Scholarship site for parents that are going to ask for a class, they have to go in and and bill on us to create the invoice on your Hope Scholarship account. So, I have to go in and create the account, and create all the classes, what they are, and their percentages, and what we'll pay. Um we can do this for for sports, for tuition, for travel, and everything is created, and then they go in and choose what they want. And that's And it comes out of their Hope Scholarship account. And if they don't have it, we charge the non-public school students and home school students the same. We
103could actually charge for the books What else can we can charge for a whole a whole bunch of things, but we just chose a flat rate instead of getting to into all the different How many different categories are there? There are so many. There's probably like 12. 12 different categories. Okay. Well, we do I think we do we do we do we do add on like sports and equipment, right? Equipment, right? >> do for the sport, and everything else is included in the 75248. If there's something that's above and beyond, then that the above and beyond cost will also be charged. Well, you know, getting back to um What was that again, ma'am? What was that policy number? Oh, um Is it not possible, you know, the thing about our citizen that came in is
104he was asking about a pro rate. He was okay with the the fee. Mhm. You know, I I I think that was that was exciting. What he was asking for is a pro-rated um value and which you know, I I I agree [clears throat] with that. I mean because you know, if they we have our it can easily I would think that it would be easily done if we if we have a baseline of 750 you know, and if say you could broke it down per quarter or even semester you could easily come in at a a value that could be you know, half of half of 750 is what? And then half divided you could do it you could divide it by four for each quarter, too. I would make a I would like
105the board to re- review this and and and give some some pathway there. It's possible. You know, I don't guess we do it tonight. That'd be a different agenda item. It wouldn't be something the board would review. It would be something the superintendent looked at the policy with the staff in the central office and made a recommendation to the board. So, this is so this is essentially your policy. No, that's our policy, but the board approves policies and regulates policies. They don't write policies. Well. But, your your points are noted and I thank you for them. All right. I think it's I think it's worth a eyeball because I mean he had a I think I think that was a legitimate request, you know, and I think we should maybe look at that. We had
106passed 5-0 to allow. That hasn't been said. Those Nobody voted against it. We allowed to bring the kid in. It's 5-0. Everybody voted to allow the children to come. Yes. That's right. Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, we get I think I think we also ought to note that whenever you are homeschooling your child and you apply for the Hope Scholarship that you get $5,000. That's a That's a scholarship through the state of West Virginia. Right. All right. Derrick, how much is it? Well, I would I would I think I think that we we have we have have noted the concern. Yeah. And >> All right. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. And then I was really impressed with Mr. Griffith's What you know, he he mentioned something there during his talk. 27 credit
107hours. Where are we at now? With our Where are we We're like 23, right? Our required credit hours? >> Um you're talking about two different things. Okay. We're talking about graduation requirements is 23 credits for the high school student. He was talking about 27 college credit hours when you go to school. So, we are talking about You're talking about two different things. They're They're not synonymous. All right. And then um really the only last thing I have and I'm never going to stop talking about this. It is a personnel issue and I know you can't talk about personnel, but we have a you know, a very unprivate personnel issue I'd like to get some resolution to and get that wrapped up, please and you. That's all I have to say. Ms. McQueen. Everything I have
108is I'm very excited about all the new CTE programs that are going to be offered to our students. Hopefully, that will bring home school students back in, get our population back up, and we're on a roll for graduation. I hope everybody goes out with a bang and gets all their credits in and let's end this year great. I do have a comment about graduation cuz Mr. McNab asked me a question and I answered it off the cuff, but I need to I need to go back a little bit. I said all of our students were on track to graduate, and they all are on track to graduate should they pass their coursework. So, we do have some students that have a path that have to do their due diligence and pass their coursework. That responsibility
109solely rests at the school level, mostly on the student and their parent to make sure because we have after school programs, there's no reason for a student to have an F in a course that they need to graduate. Mr. McNab. Uh just a couple things. Like I said, I I'd like to to I I'm very very pleased with the with the presentation Mr. Griffin put on. That's something I've been wanting ever since I got on here. Uh and thank you for working night and day to get it done. I think that's going to open up a lot of opportunities for our children. Uh the ones that don't want to go to college and the ones that do. Uh it'll help both ways. And I think that's what we're here for is to give them the
110best opportunity that we can. Uh and last but not least, Ms. Hollingsworth. She really helped me out here a lot. She would rein me in whenever I would get on a rant, she'd look at me and say, "You can't do that." But she would she's I didn't get to know her very well in just the time I was here, but she we've lost a we lost an angel. That's all I've got. Was a mentor to me as well. Of course. I just like to thank Christie for her memories of Miss Hollingsworth. I swore like vows to her I came up here if she would rain me and and nobody ever knew but me and her. Exactly. And, you know, a lot of guys knew education inside out. And, echo of one now, and New River
111is exciting. We're getting back to where we once were. Couple things. First thing, anytime there's election year, the one word that always comes up is transparency. Not enough transparency. I look the lightning at the most we had watching the board meeting was six people. If if they would watch it, they would know. Mr. Hamilton, you know this better than I do, but probably 75 or 80% of our budget's personnel. That leaves us about 20% out of our 15 fund, right? Or 11 with the 11 fund, our general account, to work with. It's not hard to determine. All these grants and everything that you see, that's work through the state that is earmarked for a particular purpose. The other question I got asked a lot is, "How come you all appointed Miss McCoy?" You know, we
112done interviews for everybody from the northern and the southern district. And the reason we did that, she had 17 years in the school system. You know, Dr. Hollingsworth would never be replaced because she meant so much to this community and to this board, to all of us. But, whenever we thought she could come in and hit the ground running and and maintain where we've been. We are out from under the state of emergency, but if you was there me and Mr. McNabb and Dr. Williams, they give us the keys to the car, but they still got the transmission. So, we're not If we don't move forward, it's going back. And we've worked very hard along with Dr. Dr. Williams has pulled us out of this thing and, you know, they said, "Well, everybody's yes people."
113No, we're not. We work together to get this stuff done and to work and to be able to support the students of Pocahontas County. Okay. Our next board meeting will be on May the 26th, 2026 at the Pocahontas County Board of Education conference room. We are hereby adjourned.