MORGANTOWN – With all this winter weather of late, can an avalanche be far behind?
One is brewing, in fact, and Monongalia County Schools couldn’t be happier.
Registration kicked off Monday for the 2026 edition Summer Avalanche, the popular summertime learning enrichment program for students across the district.
Visit Monongalia County Schools online and click on the Summer Programs page for all the particulars. Registration is open through Feb. 28.
Mon’s district created the program five years at the height of the pandemic.
That was months after remote learning, followed by the hit-or-miss nature of the contagion. Students and teachers still came down with COVID. Whole classrooms were sent home and sports teams were benched as positive diagnoses continued to mount.
Meanwhile, the Summer Avalanche came piling down – in a good way.
The county was able to pay for the Avalanche and the accompanying literacy program, The Summer Sizzler, through a $1.4 million outlay from the federal Elementary and Secondary School Relief Fund, also established in response to COVID.
Students took deep dives into computer coding, screenwriting and hands-on science projects of the “Bill Nye, the Science Guy” variety.
That funding ran out, however, and sweeping federal cuts to the U.S. Department of Education last fall quelled the idea of finding any alternative source – even in a district with an operating budget of $176.3 million, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. told The Dominion Post then.
“Every dime and dollar,” the superintendent reported, was already accounted for and spent.
“It’s not like an account we’re sitting on,” he said.
When the 2025 fiscal year ended this past June 30, District Treasurer Nicole Kemper discovered some $1 million in carryover dollars, which were promptly applied to both summer programs.
Board of Education members, meanwhile, applauded – Shawn Smith, especially.
“Now I don’t have to worry about trying to hit the lottery,” he said.
