By Stephen Smoot
“Father, we thank You for the time together this evening,” prayed Hardy County Schools Superintendent Sheena Van Meter as she led the customary invocation prior to the regular Board meeting. Attendees then rose and recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the business of the day commenced.
Josh See opened with the maintenance and transportation update. He described costs, acquisitions, and work put into landscaping work over the summer, then shared an approximate $29,000 quote to repair the HVAC system at Moorefield Elementary School. HVAC issues also plague the third grade wing at the Moorefield Intermediate School. Moorefield Middle School has almost all of its summer work completed with heat pumps awaiting delivery for installation by Trane.
School systems normally see HVAC issues in buildings after summer recess due to changes in use patterns.
Overall as the schools opened, outside of the normal HVAC problems “everything went fine. Everything went well.”
In the transportation report, See hit on the declining quality of newly constructed school buses, saying “the Allison transmissions have really given us a headache” and that “with the newer buses we’re dealing with more issues than the older buses.”
More significantly, See passed along serious concerns from bus drivers about the non English speaking children riding school buses. He shared that “we had a little girl who didn’t even know where she lived.” The driver had to bring her back to the school, look up her name to find her address, then take her home because she could not speak a word of English.
Many of the children dropped off at one local daycare also have significant English language deficiencies. There, See said “we’re having some issues.”
Audra Blackwell, a business development director from Energy Systems Group, provided a presentation on how installing energy reduction systems will save costs that will, at least in part, defer costs of installation. The company installs energy efficient mechanisms and systems that reduce power consumption and rely more on renewable production.
According to its website, “our industry expertise spans the commercial, corrections, federal government, health care, K-12, and higher education, municipal, and state governments, transportation, and utility markets.
Blackwell several years ago oversaw a systemwide installation for Harrison County Schools for all 19 of its school facilities. A release from the company stated that they “are anticipated to result in more than $8.7 million in energy and operational savings over the terms of the contracts” and “the county has exceeded the guaranteed energy savings by $352, 873.
Harrison County Schools received LED lighting, HVAC, heating and cooling equipment, and more in the contract. The then-Superintendent Dr. Mark Manchin said “we are very pleased with our cost savings and we are addressing a lot of concerns and needs in the county at the same time.”
Blackwell told Hardy County Schools officials and the Board of Education that “I’m a West Virginia native. I grew up in West Virginia,” then provided her credentials with bodies such as the West Virginia Public Service Commission and described her 17 years of work for Energy Systems Group.
She explained that “40 percent of our business is from K through 12 schools,” then said “we have a lot of solar experience.”
Her presentation called for “modernizing energy infrastructure in your facilities,” then went to specifics. Much of the pitch came in the form of guarantees. She first guaranteed no change orders, which typically come from contractors when they meet unanticipated problems that need more money to address. Blackwell promised a “fixed final price and guarantee of no change orders” in the contract.
Front end work to establish exactly what system would most efficiently and effectively serve the school, such as making sure solar is a feasible approach and marking flood plains will reduce the need for later adjustments.
Another guarantee came in the form of establishing how much savings the school system would see from the project in the contract itself. Hardy County Schools can seek any funding source, but can also finance from Energy Systems Group itself. Blackwell noted that the company operates its own financing arm as a non profit to ensure best possible rates.
Blackwell urged the Board to move forward soon, as the industry expects prices of equipment to jump considerably going into 2026 over current prices.
She said she could share more, “but that’s all I can tell you in 10 minutes.”
Board members heard testing results from their own STAR assessments and also the West Virginia State Board of Education benchmark testing. Van Meter noted significant discrepancies between the STAR and benchmark results showing proficiency. Benchmark tests from the state, when done with the same grades and subjects as STAR, show significantly fewer students starting in a state of proficiency at the opening of the year.
She also shared concerns about 11th grade achievement numbers.
Hardy County Schools recently dropped block scheduling. Touted starting in the 1990s as a way to get students more involved, block scheduling increased time in each class from a 45 to 55 minute “Carnegie Unit” to almost two hours. Experts at the time explained that teachers would have to perform better to keep students engaged for the expanded time, anticipating more in-depth work.
What they failed to note was the reason for the Carnegie Unit standard in the first place, based on research that showed 45 to 50 minutes was the most time that the average person could focus on a topic he or she had no interest in. Block scheduling failed to meet the promise made by experts. Van Meter and others noted that in Hardy County, block scheduling forced students to only be able to have mathematics or English language courses for one of the two semesters.
Class only half the school year in key subjects led to loss of retained knowledge. Officials blamed block scheduling for achievement problems extending into the 2024-25 school year.
Discussion centered on the Launchpad project at Moorefield High School, with some expressing concern over the lack of public knowledge about what it does and when it operates. The Launchpad, a State of West Virginia endorsed simulated workplace program, introduces students to the demands of the workplace and the requirements of successful entrepreneurship.
The Farmers’ Market part of the project will soon get a boost as it will receive USDA approval to sell meat products.
