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Mon BOE schools lawmakers on education issues

MORGANTOWN - The world was a different place when Eddie Campbell Jr. walked across the stage at Wheeling Central Catholic High School to take his diploma in 1984.

"I know I'm dating myself," the Monongalia County Schools superintendent said during Tuesday night's Board of Education meeting.

That was on purpose.

Given the seismic shifts in West Virginia's educational landscape since, the administrator mused, what worked 40 years ago in the classroom and board office surely isn't going to work today.

At least not as effectively.

For that matter, he continued, what was effective four years ago is now likely all but outdated, too.

Obsolete, even.

"We need to get away from that 'When I was in school ... ' kind of thinking," the superintendent said.

Campbell, who began his career in education as a teacher and coach in northern Virginia, was addressing area lawmakers who also answered roll for the meeting.

The September session between policy makers and classroom shapers serves as the regularly scheduled opening act, of sorts, for the state Legislative session to come in January in Charleston.

Del. Joe Statler, who was a longtime Mon BOE incumbent and served a couple of terms as its president, was in attendance Tuesday night, as were fellow delegates John Williams and Evan Hansen.

Joining them were Mike Oliverio and Joey Garcia, who are both senators representing north-central West Virginia in Charleston.

Board members beseeched them to work on the state aid formula for public education in the state, which they said no longer meets academic needs.

They asked them to rethink the state's management of the Hope scholarship, which gives a $6,000 outlay for families to use the money as they wish - even if it means enrolling a son or daughter in a charter or opting for home school.

Mon's school district, Campbell said, is the envy of most of its neighbors in the Mountain State.

Even so, he said, there are still critical shortages of special education teachers here, he said.

And the fact that the district, even with its innovations bought by taxpayer support of the excess levy for education is still hamstrung by state code, more often than not.

The homework assignment for the senators and delegates this coming session?

Rework the Hope scholarship.

"Make it fair guys," said Shawn Smith, the BOE president whose daughters go to school in the district.