By Stephen Smoot
One of the great honors of an elected body comes in honoring the achievements of young people who have showed off both their talent and how that is utilized with skills learned through school.
Hardy County’s Board of Education and central office staff, as part of their regular meeting, recognized some of the area’s youngest aspiring writers during the proceedings.
The meeting opened with an invocation delivered by Superintendent Sheena Van Meter. “Heavenly Father, thank you for our time together . . . we ask for wisdom and discernment.” Next came the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Dixie Bean, Hardy County Board of Education President, then asked East Hardy Elementary School principal Emily Morris to step forward. Morris had brought with her the winners of a young writers’ essay contest from her school, third grader Bristol Hopkins, fifth grader Aisiah Evans, and first grader Jessica Alpin. All got to read aloud their work as school staff, Board members, parents, and other supporters cheered them on.
Morris encouraged the children, saying “we’d be very honored to hear what you all wrote.” After their presentation, Van Meter shared “thank you kiddos for coming and reading to us.”
Recognitions did not end there. Morris herself had received recognition from the West Virginia Department of Education, who conferred upon her the “Superintendent’s Rising Leader Award.” East Hardy Elementary improvements in recent years, punctuated by the successful adoption of the “Leader in Me” program, have helped to elevate the school in several ways.
Van Meter spoke of Morris, “who is amazing and has done a wonderful job . . . she does all of it while being a good mom.”
Josh See then presented a report on both maintenance and recent inspections. A review of facilities by the State Fire Marshal’s office revealed only “minor infractions” such as some exit signs having burned out lighting and other routine matters. West Virginia Capitol Police, who protect state government facilities in Charleston, but also can review school building safety, evaluated Hardy County’s schools.
See noted that they had recommendations on improvements, but offered no funding to pay for them. He praised their efforts, calling them “a great resource for any questions we have.” Official reviews and recommendations can help to make grant funding for fixes easier to obtain.
Part of his presentation included detailed and specific reports on maintenance and repair activities.
Jessica Markwood, Director of Instructional and Technology Programs, presented on a new system to help improve both student and staff understanding of cybersecurity. Foreign malefactors, mostly organized crime but also state-supported efforts, find rural government and business systems less challenging targets for hacking efforts. Commonly, people open emails and click on unfamiliar links that allow malevolent software, or malware, to take hold. In some cases, the malware forces the computer system to be a part of a network performing certain illegitimate tasks. More often, malware shuts down a system and cuts off access to important or legally protected data. Only through a ransom can the data be freed.
Most governments pay the ransom, if infected in that fashion. Most operate far from U.S. jurisdiction and “charge” an amount that makes it more worthwhile to pay than to fight or wait it out.
Other cyberattacks come from those simply wanting to sow havoc and confusion and have neither monetary nor ideological motivations beyond making nuisances of themselves.
She described the new program as having three aspects, protecting cloud data, building firewalls to thwart attacks, and, the most important part, training everybody using the system how to avoid falling prey to a cyberattack. Training involves “fake” malware embedded emails that identify which users are not as savvy and are more apt to accidentally click on something malevolent. They will receive mandatory training.
Markwood explained that authorities have detected an “uptick” in “third party messages that have malicious software that would corrupt files and data.”
“We can also see who is accessing and what they are accessing,” she stated in reference to search histories that each device logs as it is operated. This aspect, while not cybersecurity, ensures that the devices do not get used for purposes that run afoul of the intentions of Hardy County Schools.
