Education

Marion schools superintendent: Fiscal, enrollment realities will eventually force change in the district

FAIRMONT - Marion Schools Superintendent Donna Heston told Board of Education members what they already knew last week.

That the district, she said, can't keep operating at its current levels in the face of declining enrollment.

"This is the first time Marion County lost over 300 students," she said during the board's regular meeting this past Monday.

Heston is referring to the headcount of students officially in the district for the 2026-27 school year.

At least for now.

The state Department of Education certified the numbers two weeks ago, and they show declines not just in Marion - but in all of West Virginia's 55 public districts, as well.

Education-watchers are calling it the worst drop in the public-school population since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic six years ago.

Marion's official count of 6,597 students is 329 shy of last year, to be exact.

Heston, she told the BOE, knows exactly why.

"It's the antiquated state aid formula for education," she said.

"And the lack of guardrails in homeschooling and the Hope scholarship. This is a reckoning with our legislators."

Hope dollars are public dollars, which qualifying families may use to either homeschool their children - or enroll them in charters or other private institutions apart from the district.

Either way, those are dollars coming out of the coffers for public education, the superintendent said.

To date, 500 Marion students are currently being homeschooled in the county, Heston said.

Another 737, as chronicled by the superintendent, are doing their coursework elsewhere under auspices of Hope.

The loss of 329 students this year translates to $2 million lost to the district, she said.

It adds up, the county's top administrator said.

Since 2022, Marion County has lost 1,000 students, collectively, to other avenues of education.

Do the math on that one and it translates to $6 million on the red side of the ledger that the district can't get back, Heston said.

Such deficits, as West Virginia's education department said last week, aren't unique to the north-central county.

ROLL CALL ... DIMINISHED

The Mountain State is down 8,270 students from last year. The decline of 234,957 students then to 226,687 students now represents a 3.5% drop over the edge.

Way back at the start of the 2015-16 year, some 277,452 roamed the halls and raised their hands in class across West Virginia.

Through the 1970s, the district now overseen by Heston was home to eight high schools.

Besides Fairmont Senior and East Fairmont High, there was Mannington, Barrackville and Monongah.

Fairview, Farmington and Rivesville, too.

Mine subsidence claimed Farmington in 1975.

Four years after that, most of the other schools, with the exception of Fairmont Senior and East High, were shuttered initially to make way for consolidated North Marion - but now operate as middle schools.

In 1985, Rivesville was reconfigured, too. Its students in grades 9-12 were shifted to Fairmont Senior, while the younger grades remained.

BACK TO SCHOOL (ALL OVER AGAIN)

North Marion High didn't start out being an easy sell for the county, and the Rivesville community was never behind it to begin with, as the history of Marion's education infrastructure shows.

Shifting demographics of the present, however, will likely make a Deja-vu rerun, the superintendent said.

Eventually, she said.

Inevitably, she said.

"It will be difficult for this board to continue to tighten the waistband - as long as we continue to operate 21 schools."