By Stephen Smoot
“It’s a cool story,” said Clayton Burch, Superintendent of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind.
That story predates not only the State of West Virginia, but the United States of America itself in a fashion. In 1756 the tiny settlement of Pearsall’s Flats, later named Romney, appeared at the edge of civilization. Soon after settlement, those there constructed a log structure that would serve as both a church and school.
About 90 years later emerged the Romney Classical Institute, also known as the Romney Academy. Classes now took place in a low slung, two-story Revival style building that, until the tragic fire a few years back, served as the crown jewel of a town full of antebellum architecture.
The Civil War ended the building’s role as a local educational establishment, but the campus would take on a new purpose in 1870. Since the first school for the deaf in the US opened in 1817, many states had established educational services for the deaf and blind. After West Virginia emerged in 1863, other states’ institutions took in those from the 35th State.
Then in 1869 a blind gentleman from Pendleton County, Howard Hill Johnson, took the issue to Wheeling to convince state leaders to establish such a facility for his state.
Then, the West Virginia State Legislature placed the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind on the campus of the former Romney Academy. For most of the existence of the school, it served as a residential facility for West Virginia children suffering from these sensory disabilities. Like a college the school features dormitories and has an expansive and beautiful campus to serve as both home and school to the students.
Those dormitories once helped to earn the school a very good friend. In the days before interstates, high school sports teams had to travel long distances over curving mountain roads and often found themselves having to stay over somewhere after a game. In the early 1960s, a certain star quarterback from the long-since closed Farmington High School, along with his team, stayed overnight in the school’s dorms. The quarterback in particular fell in love with the beauty of the school, the town, and its surroundings.
That quarterback, Joe Manchin, eventually became a mighty good friend to the school in his post athletic career.
As the 20th century faded and the 21st opened, the school faced growing headwinds to its course and mission. Burch explained that the growth of technology combined with changing parental choices caused a gradual decline in students coming to the school to live and learn. Parents also simply grew more hesitant to send their children to live at a school sometimes hours and hundreds of miles away from home.
Additionally, the mainstreaming movement placed a priority on placing students with various disabilities and other challenges in the same settings as children who did not face those issues.
The schools also took in more and more students who had visual and/or hearing impairments combined with even more profound challenges.
As student populations shrank, State officials started to question the utility of maintaining the 80 acre campus, but often those questions received answers from one of the school’s most stalwart defenders.
Retired teacher Ruth Rowan earned election to the State Legislature in 2002 from Hampshire and Mineral County. For 20 years she battled to keep the doors open and bring new ideas to the campus. Upon receiving the Governor’s Civil Rights Day Award in 2018 from Governor Jim Justice, Rowan said “when I was younger, we’d pass that school and say ‘what a beautiful place.’ Now I realize that beauty is within the students who go there.”
That same beauty brought Burch himself from the center of state educational impact in the state capital to Romney. He shared that “I was state superintendent when COVID hit” and at one point, his work brought him to Romney and the school.
Burch decided that he’d step away from administration at the state level and accept the job as Superintendent. “There was a lot of good happening,” he stated, then added “but we’re really missing a lot of potential.” Burch decided to take the position, telling colleagues “I want to do that. I want to do it differently.”
And by “differently” he meant “we changed the mission of the school.”
This does not mean that WVDSB has turned its back on residential based education or its work with students that have profound difficulties. It has expanded its mission to provide support to not only a new type of student, but also to every school system in the state that educates children with serious hearing or vision deficiencies.
Now the school’s mission means that the faculty and administration expanded their focus and emphasis on getting students ready for the next chapter of life. As Rachel Lanham, Transition Coordinator, explains “all of our students are capable of leading productive lives, but that looks different for many of them.”
With a wide variety of diverse outcomes possible, a student’s education must be tailored to his or her current needs, as well as potential. For some students, education at WVSDB means the difference between a life lived with significant needed support and a life lived in relative independence.
Other students can follow career and technical or college bound pathways, knowing that WVDSB can provide the tools for success, but also support even beyond graduation.
Lanham heads one of the innovative and new programs at the school, working with students post graduation. She had worked with the school under a previous administration, then took a position at West Virginia University. Students there with serious hearing and/or vision impairment, she noticed, ran into similar problems in the university environment.
At WVSDB, Lanham now heads up a program designed to help to prepare students after their high school years with tools that they can take either into the workforce or the college campus. Called CAP, or “Career Academy for Postgraduates,” students under 23 can follow “flexible pathways, including educational and vocational tracks.”
As Burch stated, Lanham creates a “very different personalization for each plan” to ensure the meeting of as many needs as is possible. Classes help with “career readiness, independent living, and academic development while gaining real-world experience.”
Another major change comes in the Outreach program. Mary Anne Clendenin operates this project, “serving students, families, and educators across the state.” This started decades ago when the school continually accumulated the latest in literature concerning the education of students with various impairments.
It now works through outreach coordinators to serve “students, families, and educators across the state” to identify needs and to provide support. This can take the form of collaboration with the broader community, training and professional development, and/or direct services and instruction to students.
Changes also include renovations to old buildings, construction of new facilities, and creating a more welcoming aspect. Theresa Thorne, wife of State Senator Darren Thorne and an educator herself, praised the school for cleaning the campus, including brush along the creek. Lanham said that in her first time working on campus, “it didn’t look like a warm, welcoming, learning environment.”
Work continues on campus. In place of the former landmark Superintendent’s house will rise a memorial that evokes the history of the building and school. The oldest building on campus, now called the Blue and Gold Building and used for storage until recently, was refurbished into a student recreational center with televisions, games, and places to relax and engage. Also, behind the student center students will soon have the opportunity to enjoy use of an outdoor classroom.
Even dorm furniture and other parts of the campus have received a welcome refresh and the changes registered immediately. Lanham notes that “i see a visible difference in the students and how proud they are of the school.
As the student population shrank, usage of the 80 acre campus and its different assets dwindled. Schools throughout the state have seen attempts to consolidate them because of reduced usage of the campus. Burch shuffled classroom and office spaces to free up one of the larger buildings on campus, then invited to relocate there a number of community service and other organizations related in some fashion to the mission or vision of the school.
The community has also received an open invitation to use other new features, such as a pickleball court.
Students enjoy a robust slate of classroom learning and other education opportunities. Next week will bring a detailed look at the academic offerings and special programs recently implemented at WVDSB for school age students.
