An alleged arson attempt at a Gilmer County elementary school has fed continuing disagreement between the county's state-appointed superintendent and some members of its locally elected school board.
Deputy State Fire Marshal Jason Baltic said investigators with the state fire marshal's office inspected an abandoned section of Normantown Elementary Aug. 21. Principal Faye Chambers said the school's roughly 130 students occupy trailer classrooms and buildings outside the mostly vacant main building, though they still use a gym attached to, but sealed off from, the abandoned portion. The students are set to move to a consolidated elementary school next school year.
Baltic said "ordinary combustibles," defined as materials like paper that one could find in a home, "were placed in a manner throughout the building that would indicate that somebody was attempting to set fire to it." He said investigators believe the materials had been in the building for some time before their discovery, though he didn't know exactly how long. He declined to reveal much further information because the office is still investigating and he doesn't want possible suspects - of which the office currently has none - to know how much info he already has.
Controversy has arisen over allegedly conflicting statements Gabe Devono has made about the building's contents, which he said appeared more to be an act of vandalism than arson.
Devono - who last year was named superintendent of the Gilmer school district, which has the state's lowest enrollment at about 900 students - told the Gazette-Mail on Monday that a custodian who wanted to get a desk from the abandoned section asked a local firefighter to go inside. Devono said the firefighter discovered "a bunch of paper" in the structure, and the superintendent said he was informed of the situation and called a local fire marshal the next day, Aug. 14, a Friday. The following Tuesday, he and Gilmer County Schools Facilities Director Joe Frashure went through the building.
"It was just paper towels rolled around, there was no continuation of paper towels, some were thrown on the cement steps, some were wrapped around the banister, some of them were soaking wet, some of them had bat feces on them, so they'd been in there for a while," Devono said. He said there were no fire accelerants, like lighter fluid, added to the paper and no evidence of attempts to actually ignite it.
After a school board meeting last month, Devono gave board members information about the situation and showed them pictures from inside the structure, but disagreement has followed over what, exactly, he told them. Dave Ramezan, editor of the Web-based Gilmer Free Press, said he was at the meeting and heard Devono's conversation with board members. He said he emailed the superintendent with general questions about the alleged arson, but Devono never replied. Devono denies ever receiving such an email.
On Sept. 3, after the meeting and sending the email, Ramezan published a post to his website titled "Why is the West Virginia Department of Education Keeping Intended Torching of the Normantown School Secret?" It included a list of questions about the incident that he said came from six people.
"Within past weeks a serious crime attempt was committed at Normantown," the post began under the words "top secret" in red, all capital letters. "The old brick school was entered and elaborate preparations were made to burn it down. Based on reports from well placed sources the perpetrator(s) used an elaborate wicking system to go from the ground floor to locations throughout the building so a match could start a fast moving flash fire."
The post also included allegations about other issues.
Devono accused Ramezan on Monday of never publishing a news release he wrote to rebut the post, though the release is on the site through a link in another post, dated Sept. 8.
"To be clear, we did not instruct anyone not to talk about this incident or to keep it secret," reads the news release, which also announced an upcoming informational meeting on the issue to be held at the elementary school. "The incident was in no respect 'top secret.'"
But during that Sept. 10 meeting - according to a video of the meeting that Ramezan recorded - Devono said he had asked board members to keep the incident confidential. Board member Carl Armour, who sat in the small audience, said Devono had told the board that the building contained a "column" that was "so big that if he put his arms around it he probably couldn't touch his fingers, and he had on his cell phones pictures of appendages going off of that column to different places in the building."
Norma Hurley, a fellow board member, said she agreed with Armour.
"I felt very, very insulted when it was reported that no one had been told just not to say anything because I would have certainly answered any question any parent in this county asked me," Hurley said in the meeting. "Let alone Normantown parents."
Also during the meeting, Frashure, the facilities director, said the building contained a "single strand" of paper heading up a stairwell that was broken in several places but went "down the hallways of the different floors of the building."
"The superintendent reported one thing that the pictures shown previously did not support," Hurley told the Gazette-Mail. Baltic said he couldn't provide photos to the Gazette-Mail, citing the investigation.
Hurley said board members have not been allowed to walk through school buildings, and have been denied other rights given to school boards that are free of state control. She said there's a feeling of mistrust fed by the state's handling of the county.
"The boards of education [in takeover counties] are totally at the mercy of state-appointed superintendents," Hurley said.
Department of Education spokeswoman Kristin Anderson said the state took over the district in 2011 and still controls finance, personnel and facilities decisions there. Before the takeover, the state Office of Education Performance Audits had found that board members were in discord, meetings were unproductive and the board wasn't following state law or state school board policy.
A video Ramezan posted of a June 1, 2015, board meeting shows dissension predates the alleged arson. Devono and board members Tom Ratliff and Bill Simmons wanted to enter a closed session to discuss property, but Hurley and Armour objected and Devono urged Simmons to move on, refusing to discuss the situation in open session. Members began raising voices.
"Carl, I'm tired of your inclinations towards me," Devono eventually says to Armour, before the meeting adjourns as members still argue and Devono asks Ramezan to turn his camera off.
Devono said Monday he did tell board members that the firefighter had called it a "wicking system," though he said the arson investigators haven't called it such.
"If it looked professionally done, I wouldn't have those kids over there, and if it was hazardous to my kids I wouldn't have them over there, or my teachers or my staff," he said. He said the building has been boarded up, and a local fire department is planning to remove the paper.
Simmons, a former president of Glenville State College, said the superintendent was "forthright" with board members about the situation. He also said the main building catching fire would've endangered the surrounding buildings where students are.
"This is not a political football," Simmons said. "This is a serious business and we need to find out what actually the situation was and not run out and speculate. Because often people speculate - and they speculate wrong."
Baltic said those with information can call the arson hot line at 1-800-233-3473; there's a reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to the arrest or conviction of an arsonist.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.