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FAIRMONT - If you're an elected lawmaker representing Marion County, the county's Board of Education wants to take you to school for a bit.
The BOE on Wednesday formally invited senators and delegates to its Nov. 17 meeting, so they can hear concerns from the district - and the district, ideally, can hear their plans for public education when the state Legislative session convenes January in Charleston.
Ideally, emphasized Pastor James Saunders, the BOE's current president.
While such sit-down sessions have been an annual staple for the board in years past, the body stopped hosting them last year, he said.
"We had them in and hardly anything was done, to be honest," said Saunders, a longtime incumbent who has served 30 years on BOE.
Both Saunders and newly elected board member Sam Brunett, a veteran teacher at Morgantown High School who still resides in his hometown of Fairmont, made the request during a regular meeting earlier this week.
The meeting will come after the Nov. 3 general election.
State lawmakers, incumbents and newcomers alike, are expected to take on the state aid formula for education in 2027 in the state capital, which detractors say doesn't adequately cover student needs.
Expect the body's perennial discussion of the Hope scholarship to ensue also.
Hope dollars are public dollars, which qualifying families may use to homeschool their children or enroll them in charter or other private institutions outside of the district.
In Marion County, Superintendent Donna Heston said, a total of 232 students had withdrawn from the district on the Hope Scholarship as of Sept. 30.
Another 500 are currently being homeschooled by parents or other caregivers.
Marion's district also pulled a zero on another state benchmark - and Heston couldn't be happier about it, she said.
The district, she said, is one of 13 in the state without one school designated as "low performing," as measured by West Virginia Department of Education benchmarks.
"That's a testament to our teachers, our students and their families," she said.
Meanwhile, attorneys for both Heston - and those representing Saunders and fellow board members Donna Costello and Kevin Rogers - are scheduled to hold their first meeting Oct. 29 regarding the lawsuit the superintendent brought against the trio this summer.
Heston is alleging she was unfairly targeted over rumors of a same-sex relationship involving another staffer in the district. She and the staffer have repeatedly denied the allegations.
The legal counsel for Saunders, Costello and Rogers, though, has since countered with a motion to dismiss the suit filed in federal court - saying the elected board members were professionally obligated to investigate the claim.