Barbour County's school board voted unanimously Monday to close two low-enrollment elementary schools at the end of the upcoming 2016-17 school year.
If the West Virginia Board of Education gives final approval for the closures, students in the attendance areas for Mount Vernon Elementary and Volga-Century Elementary will start attending Philippi Elementary in the 2017-18 school year.
According to Barbour school system documents explaining the arguments for the closure, Mount Vernon's enrollment has dropped from 115 students to 57 over roughly the past decade, and 18 of those 57 kids in the last school year were transfers from other attendance areas. While the state School Building Authority prefers an 85 percent utilization rate for school buildings, Mount Vernon's rate was 34 percent.
Volga-Century's enrollment declined from 109 students to 37 over the last decade, with enrollment projected to further drop to 31 in the upcoming school year. Sixteen of the students last school year weren't from Volga-Century's attendance area, and the school had an 18 percent utilization rate.
Barbour schools Superintendent Jeff Woofter said the low enrollment was a major reason he recommended the closures. He also said budget constraints forced the schools to have combined classrooms for the first and second graders and the third and fourth graders. Only the schools' kindergartners had their own classrooms.
"Third grade, for instance, may have seven kids in one of those schools, and we just couldn't afford to have a teacher for so few students," Woofter said.
The school system projects saving about $391,000 annually by closing the schools, which need major renovations.
"We all love our county, but people are not moving here, it's getting tougher and tougher and we're losing population," said school board President Eric Ruf, who also said the schools' academic performance was starting to slip.
He said coal mines have closed over the past decade and the oil and gas industry's activity has seemed to level off, and Alderson-Broaddus University students also don't seem to settle in the community.
Ruf said he was part of a unanimous board vote a couple years ago not to close the schools, despite a past superintendent's recommendation. He said the savings projected at the time for closing the schools didn't seem realistic, there was more community pushback against the closures and the board felt there could be other options.
He said the school system considered reconfiguring school attendance zones and consolidating the two schools into each other. It added kindergarten to Volga-Century to try to boost enrollment, and the school system also spent about $461,000 to replace the roofs at both schools in 2014-15.
Ruf said there was no intention of closing the schools at that time, and said the roofs dated to the 1979 construction of the buildings, were leaking and could no longer be patched.
He said the school system also hoped to get School Building Authority money to replace the schools' circa 1979 heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, for which parts are no longer being made, but SBA guidelines are not to provide funding to school buildings with under 60 percent utilization rates.
"We ended up right back where we were," Ruf said of board members' decision to close the schools. "... It's not a decision we took lightly. It's not one any one of us wanted to have to make."
The school system also says the consolidations would help improve transportation and food service issues. Meals for Mount Vernon and Volga-Century kids currently are prepared by cooks working at other school facilities.
Ruf said not every former Mount Vernon or Volga-Century student will have a shorter bus ride to Philippi Elementary - where some students attending Mount Vernon and Volga-Century are currently bussed before being sent to their final destinations - but average transportation times will decrease. Philippi Elementary is about 9 miles from both schools.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.