MORGANTOWN – Monongalia County Board of Education members were the choir Frank Vitale was preaching to earlier this week.
By the time he’s done, he said, he wants all of Mon to have heard the sermon.
“We’d have public schools without a levy, but it would look very, very different,” he told the BOE during its regular meeting Tuesday.
“We don’t have to go far south, east, west or north of Monongalia County to know that looks like.”
Vitale, a local business leader whose children attend school in the district, was talking about the county’s excess levy for education, which generates extra dollars for Mon Schools.
How many extra dollars?
Try $35.6 million.
That’s how much the levy, which is up for renewal on the May 12 primary, has been bringing in annually to district coffers in recent years.
Since 1973, voters have resoundingly said yes to the initiative – and the district wants to keep it that way.
Which is why Vitale was tapped to co-chair the organization tasked with selling, or reselling, the levy, which enables Mon Schools to offer all the classroom amenities and extracurricular activities it does, the co-chair said.
Levy dollars help purchase Chromebook computers while paying the salaries of school nurses and counselors, he said.
The extra outlay, he said, helps fund teacher positions and opens county classrooms to Advanced Placement course offerings that give the district academic oomph.
And “organization” is the watchword for the assemblage now officially known as “Community for Monongalia Schools,” Vitale told the board.
“We’re a registered nonprofit in the state of West Virginia,” he said. “That opens up a lot of doors for us.”
That’s by way of the informational sessions the group has been hosting since February, Vitale said, at Rotary meetings and Realtor gatherings.
Vitale and his committee colleagues have talked levy at Morgantown City Council and the Monongalia County Commission, will soon go before the local chapter of the NAACP as part of the marketing effort.
Look for upcoming appearances at West Virginia University home baseball games and BOPARC sessions, also, he said.
Some 750 postcards touting the levy have already gone out in the mail with nearly 100 campaign signs set to dot yards, soon.
In the meantime, he said, a levy “showcase” is planned April 12 at University High School.
“We’re beginning to build up a nice, grassroots effort,” Vitale said.
What that effort isn’t about, he said … is the Renaissance Academy.
Or Renaissance Academy 2.0, as it were.
The Renaissance Academy was the planned name of what would have been the county’s first standalone school for STEM – science, technology, engineering and math.
Voters, however, overwhelmingly came out against the bond measure, saying its nearly $143 million price tag was too big of an ask for their households.
Especially, they said, since the county already has a history of supporting the aforementioned education levy.
Which prompted BOE President Mike Kelly to do some preaching of his own.
A wholly new bond measure, versus an established levy, are two decidedly different ledger items in the civic life and times of a school district, he said.
The levy vote on May 12, the board president said, will be a vote to whether or not to continue what is already in place and what is already being done for Mon Schools.
“This is a renewal,” Kelly said. “And the tax rates will stay the same.”
