Tony Christini

My son attends Woodburn Elementary.

I oppose the closing of Woodburn school as a small neighborhood school; I oppose a consolidated school; and I oppose especially the proposed Mileground site for any such school.

The Mileground site sounds like a racetrack. The constant barrage of traffic from 705 screams and whines off the opposite cliff; it echoes and reverberates through the hollow to the school. All the time. It sounds like a racetrack, or a busy airport, or the busy commuter expressway that it is. At the proposed site, 705 traffic is even louder than the Mileground traffic, which will be worsened by the impending multilane road expansion. So, we should call the proposed Mileground school Noise Pollution Elementary or Racetrack Elementary.

The Woodburn site is nearly silent by comparison, except for the flood of bird calls, and it’s far more beautiful. The effect, the comparison of the two sites is strickening. It’s sickening in fact. So we should call the Mileground school Sickening Elementary.

What is your contingency plan for keeping Woodburn Elementary open as a small school indefinitely? What is your contingency plan for rebuilding Woodburn Elementary, immediately, as the small school that it is and that it ought to be and that many people – no surprise – strongly prefer it to be? By all evidence, you have failed to create such a plan. So we should call the proposed school Negligence Elementary.

Thus any hearing about consolidation and closing Woodburn is, in effect, merely for show. Clearly not serious. Any pretense in these meetings at considering not consolidating and not closing Woodburn as a small school is mere PR. So we should call the proposed school Propaganda Elementary.

The school board and administration have still failed to contact parents directly and through their schools about school closing and about school consolidation specifically. So we should call the proposed school Secrecy Elementary.

The belated brief mass email about this CEFP meeting (Monday, May 17) provided no information and no agenda. Thus, many busy and hardworking parents continue to be left in the dark about future plans for their school, even as the school district moves swiftly toward closure. So we should call the proposed school Covert Elementary, or Confusion Elementary, or Hush-Hush School.

The school district’s efforts are inappropriate, unprofessional, and essentially secretive. It all adds up to a severe disservice to the students. Parents have not been engaged directly in the way they are most accustomed to being engaged by the schools: by way of detailed information from their schools, through their children. Thus this process has no legitimacy. None. So we should call the proposed school Illegitimate Elementary.

Since the school district has failed to contact parents specifically about whether or not they support consolidation or closing, we should call the proposed school Parents Keep Out Elementary.

Data shows that the proposed school site is undermined, so we should call the school Undermined Elementary, or Subsidence Elementary, or, for mine-fill grouting, Costly Elementary.

The intersection of 705 and the Mileground is already high traffic and congested, which a large school would dramatically worsen. So we should call the proposed school Congestion Elementary.

The wind blows from the intersection of 705 and the Mileground toward the proposed school. When I protested the site with two dozen others at the intersection, when I arrived I was initially overwhelmed by the fumes. But then I think I became numb to it. So the proposed school should be called Air Pollution Elementary or Numbing Elementary.

The intersection of 705 and the Mileground is expected to soon be moved by the Department of Transportation hundreds of feet closer, directly toward the school, as additional lanes of traffic are added. This makes the intersection of 705 and the Mileground a perfect place for a warehouse, and a terrible place to inhabit. So the proposed school should be called Warehouse Elementary.

Everyone agrees that the current Easton school location at the high traffic intersection is terrible, so what sense does it make to move the school from one high traffic intersection to another? So the proposed school should be called Hypocrisy Elementary.

Though some Easton parents support the Mileground site, other Easton parents have said “Anyplace but the Mileground.” So call it, Anyplace But Elementary.

Easton Elementary needs to be rebuilt and relocated immediately. By all evidence, you currently have the funds to do so, in hand, without need for much if any state assistance. The consolidated school on the Mileground would steal the funds from a small school for Easton. So the proposed school should be called Theft Elementary.

Of the parents at both Easton school and Woodburn school, many - and as well as anyone knows, quite possibly the vast majority - prefer two small schools. Plus, the bulk of research shows that the smaller the school the better for everyone involved. Plenty of research also shows that small schools can be operated as economically or more economically than consolidated schools. So why is the school district pursuing the highly unpopular worst of all possible worlds? The proposed school should be called The Worst Solution Possible Elementary.

What about the environmental aspect of all the commercial and military buildings and operations on the Mileground, not least the  immediately adjacent armory and whatever chemicals, weapons, and other munitions are handled and stored there. Any chance that parents can get a complete list of the chemicals and explosives stored at the armory, which sits practically on top of where their children are to spend their growing formative years learning and playing? The university’s “Hazardous Materials Storage” facility, which contains “everything,” I was told, is located in the fields and in the windstream across route 705 from the school. Maybe the proposed school should be called Hazardous Elementary.

Even if the armory relocates at some point, as is apparently planned, will the site be left environmentally clean? And what future development can be expected there at the main intersection of the commercial strip that is the Mileground? The proposed school should be called Commercial Sprawl Elementary.

And how large is the school site, really? A full 7 acres? Not in effect, because the acreage bordering 705 and close to the expanded intersection is useless because it should be off limits to children. The proposed site is actually very narrow, and it will need drives and roads built upon it, as well as all of the parking, given the lack of municipal parking. Plus, anywhere that you could expand would be toward congested and growing highways. On the other hand, since you don’t mind putting the school on a 24/7 racetrack, it seems you may actually want this seven acre site so that you can sooner or later expand it toward more of the racetrack to add hundreds more students than you are currently telling us. So maybe we should call the proposed school Expansion Elementary or Racetrack Elementary in addition to everything else we do well to name it.

The Mileground site is a lousy site for a lousy idea. Not to mention that it would destroy the quiet, ideally sited neighborhood Woodburn school.

You have not shown at all why any supposed financial concerns must trump everyone’s best interests. You have not shown that one consolidated school would be less expensive than two small schools. You have not shown at all that the district in tandem with the state cannot afford to continue to build and operate two small schools, just as has been done for decades, a century. Why would you want to be the school board and the administration that failed, that terminated these two schools, especially the one that is a vital cornerstone of its community? Even if you could show some marginal difference in cost between a consolidated school and two small schools, you still will have failed to recognize that some extra cost can be justified by the very great benefits of rebuilding two small schools. Easton at a better location. Woodburn where it is.

Take care of Easton school immediately. You owe that school the most. And then, the following year, after directly and specifically engaging the Woodburn parents – which, as of even today, you still have not done – take care of Woodburn school.

Remember, regarding consolidation and closing, you continue to operate, for all practical purposes, in secret from the vast majority of the parents. You have never contacted them directly nor specifically on these matters. And you have no contingency plan for rebuilding Woodburn school and Easton school as small schools, instead of consolidating and closing. So no one should consider these hearings on the consolidated Mileground school plan to be serious. Nor is this process legitimate. Even beyond these grave breaches…sorry to say, the proposed Mileground school…it’s a joke.

Who has come up with a better name for the planned school on the Mileground? How about we call it: Don’t Consolidate, Don’t Build There…Elementary.

The fact is that small schools are the best way to educate, the most popular way to go, and are also affordable. In 2009, University of Virginia researchers noted, in accord with the large body of research, “large schools no longer are regarded as the panacea for America’s educational challenges. Many of the problems of public education, from low student achievement to high dropout rates, are being traced to large schools….”

Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology John Alspaugh of the University of Missouri concludes in his 2003 study of Missouri schools, ”School Size as a Factor in Elementary School Achievement,” that “There was  a general decline in achievement as school enrollments increased for both the inter-city and suburban schools.” The Professor Emeritus notes that such findings by other researchers about elementary schools and other schools are common and that they especially hold true for urban schools (of which Woodburn is one) and for low income students, of which Woodburn and Easton have many. On average, the Woodburn and Easton schools have slightly less than 200 students each. Is it not interesting then that Professor Alspaugh found that “Schools with enrollments less than 200 achieved the highest [Stanford test] scores in all the five academic areas of reading, math, language science, and social science.” (Education Information Resources Center, April 28, 2003)

In a study published by Nebraska Law Review in 2003, Bob Bastress, Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law reviews the extensive literature on the educational and community benefits of small schools which show that small schools are generally far more beneficial. WVU Professor Bastress goes on to explain that “There is simply no reason to conclude that a district has to consolidate schools in order to have ‘modern, safe physical facilities.’ The state could build or repair small, community schools that are just as modern and safe as any new or expanded consolidated school.” Professor Bastress points out how smaller schools are more safe and “generally have fewer discipline problems or violent outbreaks.” In addition, Professor Bastress explains that “The facts in West Virginia show that the state has not saved money from its fifteen years of consolidations…. Larger schools, it has been found, in fact generate significant hidden costs.” He adds, “The last interest claimed by the state, that consolidation will enhance curricular offerings, also lacks a factual basis….”

Community groups in Morgantown and around the nation are working to save or rebuild their small local schools. In summary, they have learned that the research shows that small neighborhood schools:

“improve student learning…reduce the achievement gap between poor and affluent students and minority students and whites…cultivate better student attitudes…cultivate better teacher attitudes…reduce discipline problems, truancy, and drop-out rates…better engage parents in their children’s learning and foster closer parent-teacher relationships…encourage walking to school [which] improves children’s health and active engagement in learning… The bottom line: New studies…have strengthened an already notable consensus on school size: smaller is better…. Researchers…offer a rule of thumb: the poorer the school, the smaller its size should be. [In smaller schools] students learn well and often better [than in larger schools]…” (saveourneighborhoodschools.com Lawrence, Kansas)

So, again, what is the school district’s major plan or even contingency plan for rebuilding Woodburn school and Easton school as small schools, instead of consolidating and closing?