Not your “grandfather’s vo-tech.”
That’s how John Chadwick described the proposed Renaissance Academy to members of the Monongalia County Board of Education at a meeting last June.
Chadwick is an architect and project manager with the Washington, D.C., offices of the DLR Group, an international firm that could leave big footprints across the educational terrain of Mon Schools.
DLR has been tasked with designing the aforementioned academy, which would be the district’s first standalone school devoted solely to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
If voters say yes at the polls in May, the Renaissance Academy could be open by 2027 to all students across Mon — whether they attend public school, a charter school, private school or are home-schooled.
Proponents say such an academy would offer untold opportunities for the students wanting a professional life in a STEM field, either by way of college or a direct portal into the workforce.
Opponents, though, say the bond call of nearly $143 million for its construction cost is simply too pricey and would put too much of a tax burden on already-strapped household budgets.
Besides, they say, the Monongalia County Technical Education Center already does a good job training and motivating those students who don’t want to sit in traditional classrooms.
Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr., along with BOE President Ron Lytle and board member Jennifer Hagerty, a former teacher and administrator in the district, sat down with the editorial board of The Dominion Post last week to talk about the possibilities.
If it can get built, the trio said, the academy would make the grade with every household in the county.
“This is not an ‘Eddie Campbell idea,’” the superintendent said. “It’s an actual ‘Community of Morgantown’ idea.”
It came of the 2020-30 edition of the Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan — known as the CEFP — which is a visionary owner’s manual of sorts for every public district in West Virginia.
Every 10 years, educators dialogue with parents, industry leaders and others to draft that decade’s edition of the plan.
Mon’s 2000-10 CEFP called for a new University High School.
Eastwood Elementary, the county’s first-and-only green school to date, was the centerpiece of the 2010-20 document.
The concept that became the proposed Renaissance Academy rose to the top of the current CEFP.
Academy-versus-tech center
From its campus on Mississippi Street, the district’s tech center, meanwhile, does boast a diverse range of offerings to go with its high rates of attendance and graduation.
However, the trio told the editorial board, what it doesn’t have is a deep dive into STEM.
Students also must wait until their junior year to enroll — which usually means deferring core classes, Advanced Placement classes and extracurricular activities, once they do get in.
And there are wait-lists for some offerings there.
Three years ago, Mon’s district submitted a nearly $2 million request to the state School Building Authority, the agency that doles out dollars for school infrastructure projects, which would have been used to tack an e-gaming and robotics space onto the tech center.
The district was denied — and the whole notion may have been impractical anyway, said Lytle, who runs his own contracting company.
That’s because the 40-year-old tech center wasn’t necessarily built to evolve, he said.
Campbell agreed.
“We just don’t have the space,” the superintendent said.
Don’t look for the tech center to sit vacant, he said.
It would be reconfigured to offer career technical education geared to middle school students.
A dynamic … dynamic
The academy all the while would present a blend of STEM-heavy collaborative learning — Advanced Placement courses in calculus, physics and the like — with hands-on interactive experiences.
It could be a springboard to a four-year college for medical school, or a launch directly into the workforce, with all the credentials and certifications of completion coveted by employers.
The idea would be to staff the academy with current teachers who could transition, given that STEM classes in the three public high schools wouldn’t be as populated.
Buses would shuttle students to and from their respective main high schools throughout the day.
Lytle, in the meantime, can imagine a robotics team at work at the academy — with one group designing the robot, another fabricating it, another programming it, and still yet another group doing the marketing for the competition.
And all under one roof.
“That’s how it works in the real world,” he said.
While the academy would come under the jurisdiction of Mon County Schools, its doors, as Campell said, would also be open to students from all academic walks.
“We’re not gonna turn any student away,” he said.
Hagerty said she likes that industry partners would provide internships and other shadowing opportunities most high schoolers wouldn’t get otherwise.
“Our kids deserve these opportunities.”
Meanwhile, for a look at computer animations, plans and other particulars related to the Renaissance Academy, visit the Mon Schools website: https://boe.mono.k12.wv.us/.
Learning from Loudoun
Last month, Campbell chartered a bus and took board members and teachers to the Academies of Loudoun, an elite magnet school in Northern Virginia — Leesburg, Loudoun County — that focuses on STEM education.
The school is the inspiration of the academy here for Campbell, who, in fact, began his career in the Commonwealth as a teacher in Loudoun County Schools.
While the demographics are different — Loudoun County and its neighbor, Fairfax County, are among the wealthiest in Virginia and around the Beltway — the motivation of the school is the same as the one Campbell wants to build in the Mountain State.
Which impresses Lytle, he said.
That’s because, he said, it’s a microcosm of the West Virginia experience.
Just as Mon County oftentimes loses its best and brightest to, say, the Research Triangle in North Carolina, Loudoun County, in the days before its Academies showpiece, suffered brain drain malaise also.
Right next door to Fairfax, as it turned out.
A top STEM school there was pulling students away.
Then came the Academies of Loudoun.
“Loudoun figured it out,” he said.
Mon will too, with the Renaissance Academy, the local superintendent said.
“One of the things that drives me crazy right now,” Campbell said, “is the idea that we have kids trying to get into programs that are interesting to them, that are engaging to them, and that they want as part of their future — and we can’t take them all. It’s a disservice.”
Dollars and sense (Grande, Venti and otherwise)
A top-tier school such as the Renaissance Academy, Lytle said, would attract industry partners already here.
It might also inspire other businesses and tech companies to locate to Mon, which does fare better than most West Virginia counties.
Such new arrivals, he said, could quickly benefit from a homegrown, and highly trained, workforce.
It does make for sticker shock right now, he allowed.
The bond call on the May ballot will total $142.6 million, to be exact.
Depending upon the interest rate, that means a resident, over the 30-year run of the bond, could pay an additional $52.56 a year — per every $100,000 in home value.
Campbell, though, wanted to brew it into perspective. Cost ledgers can be nuanced, too, he said.
He broke it down, by the month, for the three-decade run of the bond.
Comes out to around $4.25 a month, the superintendent said.
For 30 years.
“So, for less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee, you just paid for the Renaissance Academy.”
Which percolates another question: What happens if the bond fails May 14?
“If it doesn’t pass, it would be our intention to get it on the November ballot,” Campbell said.
“I hope we won’t have to worry about that. Our community supports education.”
