A poignant thing happened on the way to the start of the demolition of the former Suncrest Primary School two years ago.
When the heavy equipment showed up that December morning on leafy Junior Avenue, a handful of teachers who had spent their formative professional years at the front of the school’s classrooms – were already there.
Beth Bossio, who went to Suncrest Primary as a little girl and lives just down the street, had alerted the educators for the final roll call.
“We just wanted to get people together one more time,” she said then. “Before it becomes whatever it’s going to become.”
In accordance with the original 1925 deed, there was actually no question to the latter, Bossio reminded the Monongalia County Board of Education Tuesday evening.
Said document to the district from now-defunct Monongahela Development Company, as Bossio recounted during the board’s final meeting of the year, stipulated the property either be used for a school building or a public park.
One or the other, by decree.
If the school goes away, the green expanse takes its place.
That discussion had been in the air, in fact, since the last day of school in 2016.
Suncrest Primary was shuttered and the earth started moving at the end of Collins Ferry Road for a new Suncrest Elementary, which opened a year later.
Not much has happened since with the property, however.
Aging playground equipment on the original grounds was removed after Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell deemed it unsafe.
Two weeks ago, Mon Circuit Court Judge Cindy Scott ruled in favor of the Suncrest Neighborhood Association when she ordered the property transferred to the city of Morgantown to be used, 100 years later, as a community park after all.
While the BOE has 30 days to appeal, Bossio, along with her Suncrest neighbors Barbara Hildebrand and Matthew Cross, asked board members and the district to let the legal wrangling rest.
Like most facilities of its vintage, Suncrest Primary was built to last – but not necessarily to evolve.
The building was dedicated in 1939, with additions tacked onto the 1950s, and again in the 1990s, as the neighborhood grew.
An antiquated boiler system needed extensive repairs and there was widespread water damage from a chronically leaking roof. Asbestos, used widely as a fire prevention agent through the 1970s before its health hazards were known, would have had to have been fully removed to bring the building to current code.
(Re)making history
It’s a matter of respect now, the trio told the board, for the community and for the original document.
Suncrest Primary, like a lot of little West Virginia schools in a lot of little West Virginia neighborhoods, was the social epicenter of Junior Avenue and its attendance area, they said.
You went there, and your kids, and maybe your grandkids, too.
Christmas pageants, bake sales and parent-teacher conferences – where your teacher may have twinkled that your youngest acts just like you did when you were that age.
An official green space, sanctioned by the city and BOPARC, would respect and honor that presence in the community, all three said.
Cross, who is president of the Suncrest Neighborhood Association, told BOE members he couldn’t stay for the whole meeting, as he had to look in on his 98-year-old mother.
“I point this out only because she was alive when that school was dedicated,” he said. “This isn’t such ‘ancient history,’ as some people might think.”
The board went into executive session to discuss the matter but didn’t take any other action.
