BLACKSVILLE – Kent Saul’s agriculture classes at Clay-Battelle Middle-High School aren’t just filler for the course schedule.
For the students who go through them, then go on to work in the industry, said classes are iconic at the school on the western end of Monongalia County.
That’s why Saul, who is retiring after 27 years on the job, began worrying, as he learned of a possible reconfiguration of the program he said would ultimately take away from its mission.
Monongalia County Schools posted the soon-to-be vacant position, but still planned on promoting from within to fill it – utilizing an educator already in county with a Ph.D. in biology, in fact, who would teach the same courses that Saul created and taught for his nearly three decades at Clay-Battelle.
Said candidate, meanwhile, would also advise the school’s robust Future Farmers of America program, which is known regionally for the achievements of its students under Saul’s tenure and the previous two ag teachers before him.
“I’m proud of our kids,” Saul said. “What they do is a big deal.”
GROWING CONCERNS?
In turn, the district had a deal, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said, that would have enhanced agriculture education at Westwood Middle, utilizing that same teacher.
The idea was to have the teacher instruct a new offering in horticulture through Project Lead the Way, a STEM-based program.
“She would have still been full-time at Clay-Battelle,” Campbell said. “It would have benefitted both schools.”
A flexible schedule – say one day a week at Westwood, Campbell proposed, would have stirred into the soil.
Saul, however, worried about the workload.
He isn’t retired yet – so his days often run until 7 or 8 at night, he said, as he makes the rounds across the county, checking the FFA projects his students are doing at Hagans, Burton and other out-of-way locales.
And that’s just during the school year.
In the summer months, there are county fair and other venues to tend to, where livestock and other FFA projects are shown, judged and sold, he said.
With another school involved, he worried that full-time would turn into half-time.
“Anytime you go with something that’s half-time, that’s another way of saying, ‘Well, in a couple of years, we’re just gonna rid of it.’ I was concerned.”
So, he wanted to nip it in the bud, as it were.
He delivered his concerns to social media.
Facebook.
He made a post, saying if his former students and others shared those concerns, they should let the district know about it.
“It just took off after that,” he said.
A BUMPER CROP … OF NOT-QUITE
Which, Campbell said, brought in a new harvest of concerns for the district.
“Right now, there’s just a ton of misinformation out there,” the superintendent said.
“We have absolutely no cuts planned for FFA at Clay-Battelle, or any agriculture programs at Clay-Battelle. We never considered it. It never even came up.”
In the meantime, an online petition at Change.org had garnered 163 signatures as of 1:15 p.m. Friday, which was just 37 shy of its goal of 200.
A number of other supporters are still planning on turning out and speaking at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, which will be at 5 p.m. that day at the district’s central office in Sabraton.
Saul will be at the meeting, he said, though he won’t address board members formally.
He did have a meeting this past week in his office, however, with the district’s deputy superintendent Donna Talerico.
“It was respectful,” he said. “I don’t think the district realized everything that goes into the job.”
REAPING THE HARVEST
Campbell said the district will now consider reposting the position exclusively at Clay-Battelle, as it is now.
Saul appreciates that, he said.
He appreciates the state-of-art facilities on his school’s campus, including a polycarbonate greenhouse – to go with that blooming network of FFA alumni he set up during his first days on the job 27 years.
The teacher and working agriculture professional appreciates the good work his former charges are doing, especially with all those supply chain-empty grocery shelves out there at present.
“That’s what this is really about,” he said. “This is part of our identity out here. We need to keep this going.”
