by Mark Brazaitis

My name is Mark Brazaitis, and I’m an associate professor of English and the director of the creative writing program at WVU. My wife and I have two daughters in Mon County public schools. Thank you for allowing me to speak with you tonight.

The Board of Education has of course read the studies about the superiority — for the children who attend them — of small schools over large schools. Members of the BOE would not be in their current position if they were ignorant of this salient fact.

It is therefore a mystery why the BOE continues to insist that a mega-school, most likely to be situation on the Mileground—on the Mileground, the most congested place in all of Morgantown, the air polluter’s paradise—is going to outperform a pair of neighborhood schools where children feel safe and welcome and parents feel connected to everyone from the administration to the people who make sure the schools are looking good.

It is a mystery that is leaving so many of us shaking our heads—shaking our heads and despairing for the loss of something good – something great.

The neighborhood school. A place where everyone knows your name. A place where children can feel important—and be important—because they are important—and are not lost in the crowd – are not sacrificed to the cost-saving gods of economies of scale.

When I came to Morgantown ten years ago, I was told—and I’ll be frank—that the public schools here weren’t all that good. “There are, however, a couple of excellent small schools,” said the man who hired me.

I know about small schools. I attended a small elementary school in a big place—Washington, D.C. It was the best educational experience I’ve had. I didn’t feel anonymous the way I sometimes did in junior high and high school – and, yes, even in college.

The principal knew my name. The librarian knew my name. Kenny, the man who kept the school clean, knew my name. They not only knew my name—they knew things about me. They knew I liked basketball. They knew that if my NBA career didn’t work out—alas, it didn’t—I wanted to be an ambassador to a country in Africa.

Of course I wanted my daughters to have a similar experience. I was grateful they could. I am grateful they can.

My oldest daughter is a graduate of Suncrest Primary. My youngest daughter will graduate from Suncrest next year. My wife and I arranged for them to transfer out of district so they could attend Suncrest. It was that important to us that they attend a small neighborhood school.

What would we have done if there were no good small public schools in Morgantown? We certainly would have considered moving to Pittsburgh or Washington, Pennsylvania. If other families had the means to make such a move, I am certain they would give it serious thought. But most do not have the means. And that is yet another reason that you must do the right thing here—because so many families cannot vote with their feet and move to better schools but must abide by your decision whether it’s wise or something less-than-wise.

My family and I understand how crucial neighborhood schools are. And we are not alone. You have heard from parent after parent, from child and after child, who has spoken passionately and convincingly about why the neighborhood school not only provides a richer learning space for children than a school situated in the middle of nowhere good but solidifies a community.

It is a mystery why you are not standing with them. It is a mystery why the Mileground – the Mileground! – makes more sense to you than neighborhood schools that define their neighborhoods, that uplift and enrich children’s lives.

All change isn’t good change. Bigger isn’t always better. And when it comes to schools, it’s worse. But you know this. You know this well. You’ve done your homework. You’ve read the studies.

So why, in this most critical of exams, are you failing?

Please go back and revise your answers. Please choose what is best for our children, our communities, and our city. Thank you.

by Susan Eason

I know that I am beating a dead horse, but architect Ted Shriver’s LEED presentation to the BOE and the public left me angry. Ted Shriver either knowingly or due to lack of effort presented inaccurate/false/misleading information about how the LEED rating system and its associated points could play out on the various sites.  To me that is outrageous!!!

The LEED rating system can be worked a variety of ways and Ted did not accurately present the potential of the Woodburn site to earn as many, if not more, points under the Site Selection category than the Mileground site.    Knowing this information will, I am sure, not change the outcome, but at least the BOE and the public should know that the site being chosen does not have the same potential to earn the highest LEED Site Selection Credit’s as the Woodburn site.

Let me focus for a minute on the specific Site Selection criteria that Ted focused on last night:  Development Density and Community Connectivity.   Under this criteria a project can earn points by following 1 of 2 options as outlined below (see full LEED for Schools Document at http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=7248 ) :

OPTION 1:  This option calls for developing on a previously developed site AND in a community with a minimum density of 60,000 sqft per acre (which is based on a development density of a typical 2 story downtown development and this must include the area of the project being built).

OR

OPTION 2:  This option calls for developing OR renovating a building on a site that meets ALL of the following criteria:

- Is located on a previously developed site

- Is within 1/2 mile of a residential area with avg density of 10 units/acre

- Is within 1/2 mile of at least 10 basic services

- Had pedestrian access between the building and the services

Please note that both options call for developing on a PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED site .  Woodburn definitely meets that.  It is not so clear if the Mileground site would meet that criteria.  A determination would be made by the Green Building Certification Institute, the entity that ultimately reviews and approves/disapproves all LEED projects.

As for goods and services and the pedestrian access between the project and the services….Woodburn has that already.  The Mileground MIGHT have that at some future date, but this would require sidewalks be built along the school side of the Mileground and operational within 1 year of school occupancy.

Within a half mile radius of Woodburn, Shriver failed to note that there are at least 10 services that you can walk to.  They are: Wes Banco, two churches, two Dairy Mart convenience stores, a nail shop, the Dominion Post, Marilla Park pool and tennis courts, Townhill Laundry Mat, The Handbag Boutique, Town Hill Bar and Grill, Richwoold Grill, Mario’s Fishbowl, Whitemore Park, Division of Motor Vehicles, Superior Photo, Brockway Hair Salon, Brockway Mini Mart, Suds Car Wash, 3 Piano studios and the Marilla Community Center.  This LEED credit criteria could potentially earn 4 points.

So…on this credit Ted was misleading at best.

Another Sustainable Site credit Ted focused on was the one dealing with availability of Public Transportation.  This credit gives 4 options for meeting the criteria.  The only one of the 4 options that would potentially work for either the Woodburn or Mileground sites is Option 2:  Bus Stop Proximity.   This option states:

Locate project within 1/4 mile walking distance of 1 or more stops for 2 or more buslines.  You can count the school bus stop as one of these lines.

Last night people paused and gasped when Shriver said that Woodburn did not earn any points in the Public Transportation credit because there are no buses that run within a 1/4 mile of the site.  You gasped because you know that was wrong (a lie).  There are two different buslines that stop at Richwood and Charles, 100 feet from the school–The Blue and Tyrone Rd. Mountain Public Bus Transportation.  Additionally you can count the school buses.  This credit earns the Woodburn site 6 additional points.

Friends,  that is 10 additional LEED points that Ted Shriver failed to acknowledge for the Woodburn site!!!

In calculations with my husband Chris, who is a LEED AP like Ted Shriver, the Woodburn site could potentially earn at least 21 points (out of 24 for Site Selection points), putting it ahead of the 17 points (I believe) he recorded for the Mileground.  Shriver is earning 6% of the $15 million dollar project, part of that is to show how his client’s site preference would potentially earn the most LEED Site Selection points over others.  What Shriver failed to do is show how the Woodburn site could earn just as many and probably more than the Mileground site.

I am outraged that he has falsely presented this information, skewing the results to make it appear that the Mileground site objectively is the superior site.  Friends,  it is not.  According to LEED Site Selection criteria, the current Woodburn site has the potential to earn more credit points than the Mileground.

You should know that Ted Shriver has either not done the job he was hired to do with our tax dollars or has lied to the public.  Either is a total disgrace.  Do not be doped.  It is outrageous what was presented last night.  It was wrong!

by Contstance Harward

Practically everyone campaigns for city council by saying they’re going to do something about THE TRUCKS driving through town.  We all know the Greer gravel quarry is owned by the orig. founders of the Post, and the current ownders..  These trucks are a MENACE — wasn’t Green Bag Road built for the trucks to circle AROUND downtown?

Also:  the downtown post office is full of black mold, acc. to the workers.  They’re sick; OSHA has either not been notified or done nothing about it if they know.  They have 1 bathroom for both sexes; no venilation.  It’s a travesty.  next time you drive across the High Street Bridge take a look at the back of the building.  The employers at the post office tell me they’re more afraid of the building collapsing than the bad air.

Dom Post — stop running articles about obesity and then publishing deadly recipes that further obesity.  EVERY PICTURE feature someone grossly overweight, child or adult.

Let’s point some fingers at local property owners — starting with absentee landlords downtown that keep the place looking like a 1960s town with bad renovation idea.  There are no standards, no incentive to preserve older building.  I don’t think painting brick ORANGE or BLUE suffices. Nor the flashing elec. sign on the “renovated” downtown theater.  Remodelved perhaps — not renovated.  The buildings that stand empty or are scary — who owns them?  Let’s get this information into the open and get the owners (Vaughn Kiger!!!) to fix them up.

Press the issues of neighborhoods STAYING are single-owner domiciles — we don’t wish to be invaded by renters and owners who will not keep up their properties.  There is a LOT of vandalism in these area.

Get someone (again, out the slum lords ) about the vile street of road with the filthy condemned houses that are rented out to students/the poor, in lower South Park, from Buckhannon down towards 7.  It’s a disgrace.

So is Beechurst — most people’s first view and impression of Morgantown is the grubby rentals and shabby houses are you round the curve from Mon Blvd and enter town.  Chico’s, for the Pete’s sake, surely has the $ to clean up their properies.

by Tony Christini

The two main points that need to be stressed…are how very undesirable would be a school at the Mileground intersection…and how desirable would be a new school on revitalized Woodburn grounds.

One of the best features of Appalachia has long been its neighborhood schools. That is one of the best features of the entire country. It is time to stop destroying neighborhood schools. It is time to rebuild. Otherwise we would destroy and not renew some of the best of Appalachia, and the country.

The Woodburn school grounds are a perfectly sited residential place for a neighborhood school. What could be more educationally and economically negligent than not using the great site we already own?

Putting a school for little children on the Mileground, at the intersection of a busy and congested soon-to-be-four-or-five-lane highway is beyond lousy. It is terrible. It could hardly be called a neighborhood school. It would be more accurately known as the school of Racetrack Sprawl. That proposed site is amazingly skinny, about four times as long as it is wide, and the widest part abuts the screeching 705 throughway – which means it scarcely has more reasonably useable ground than does the current Woodburn site. Plus, traffic noise constantly cracks over that whole Mileground site. For wasting millions of dollars on that ground we gain nothing over what we already own but headaches.

Have you all have walked the proposed Mileground site? With your eyes and ears wide open? Have you seen the sprawl and the traffic? Have you heard it dominate the grounds? Would you really put a school for little children at the screaming loud polluted intersection of two busy and congested commuter highways? In commercial sprawl? Would that represent the best of Appalachia?

You don’t see the university offering any of its beautiful and quiet land set off from 2 lane roads. But in a heartbeat, apparently, the university would sell for a steep price its loud and lousy land at the Mileground intersection, fit for a car dealership or a warehouse, not a school. That may be the lousiest piece of land the university owns. It’s FUBAR to spend millions of dollars of our public funds, non-grant money, just to buy a crazy strip for building on, especially since the school district already owns a great site. You could build half a small school just for the horrible land cost. It’s FUBAR to build at the Mileground intersection even if the land were given for free. Those of you with military backgrounds, along with many civilians, know what the acronym FUBAR stands for. In its milder translation it means, Fouled Up Beyond Any Repair. The proposed Mileground intersection school would be no Green School. It would be a FUBAR School. And not worthy of Appalachia.

As far as schools go, bigger is basically worse, and neighborhood schools are the most ideal, as the research overwhelmingly shows. Well, let’s take some anecdotal evidence too. The problem with that is, many of the teachers are afraid to speak out. I wonder why? You should hear the teacher criticism of the district administration that we do. But they are too afraid of the administration, afraid for their jobs, to speak out. Others think there is simply no reasoning with the district, so why bother? Well, the administration consolidates and closes neighborhood schools and then the school board wonders why the overcrowding, and why the discipline problems, and why the weak graduation rates? Why? It’s time to revalue and rebuild neighborhood schools. We have repeatedly offered to help in this, thus far to little avail.

When the Mileground intersection site was revealed (so belatedly) at the special board meeting for the first time a few weeks ago, it was laughable. No wonder the site was kept secret for so long! And yet here we are today, seriously considering giving the university millions of dollars of our public funds for a strip of loud and lousy land.

It’s as if the school district is tone deaf or willfully ignorant to the public perception and to the objective reality of what the Mileground intersection is and to what it is slated to become, with the surrounding roads about to double in size and the intersection set to expand and be moved closer, potentially far closer, to the proposed school.

I encourage you to visit that site, and walk through the din, and imagine what it will be like after the highway and intersection expands. Look around, all the way around to the commercial strip and to the expressway. And listen. Then drive to Woodburn Elementary and walk those grounds. You’ll see it and hear it and feel it at once. There is no comparison in the quality.

What is proposed to be done in not rebuilding at Woodburn is hurtful and harmful. And I do not mean emotionally hurtful and harmful. The Mileground intersection site is destructive of good money, destructive of good sense and common sense, destructive of place, of educational experience, of community, of the professionalism of the school district, and destructive of relations between the school district and the public.

It is not our job to do your job for you.

It is our job to keep the school district from purchasing very expensive and lousy land, with public funds. No school at a major commuter and commercial traffic intersection can be green, and all schools should be green. We cannot stand by and let the district go FUBAR at the Mileground intersection with our children. It is time to rebuild the best features of Appalachia and of the country, and it is time to stop making some of the worst features even worse. No one should stand for a school built on an expensive, difficult, and loud site, at the horrendous Mileground intersection. The Woodburn school and grounds must be thoroughly revitalized and built anew, preferably as a small neighborhood school, or, if the administration really cannot manange two new small schools, then as a neighborhood school big enough to include Easton school students. The quiet residential Woodburn site can be readily made to welcome those students who must travel a few extra minutes to avoid an atrocious intersection school. As we have seen tonight, the Woodburn site can be developed as a high quality and great new neighborhood school.