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Nancy Walker leaves behind big shoes to fill

After 28 years of service on the Monongalia County Board of Education, Nancy Walker has announced her decision not to seek reelection. Walker has always been known for her engagement — even before she was on the BOE, she was on her kids’ school’s PTA and improvement council, plus she did Read Aloud. She brought that same energy (and maybe more) to her role on the county’s board of education. Walker takes with her almost three decades of institutional knowledge that will be sorely missed. She’s overseen countless changes from bonds and levies to superintendents to opening ...

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid 2

Good: HB 4428 — a candidate for election for any state, county, or local office is required to have his or her principal residence within the election district for the office for which they are seeking to be elected. The bill defines “principal residence” as “residence where the candidate is domiciled which includes both physical residency and an intent to remain in the state, district, county, or municipality.” This bill passed the House and is in the Senate. If your U.S. history classes ever made it as far as Reconstruction, you may have learned the term ...

SB 468: Anti-abortion propaganda in schools

The West Virginia Senate is advancing a bill that would force schools to show students an anti-abortion propaganda film produced by an extreme “pro-life” group that became infamous for secretly videotaping Planned Parenthood consultations and crusading to end federal funding for the provider. SB 468 would require schools to show the video “Meet Baby Olivia,” produced by the anti-abortion group Live Action, to all eighth graders and tenth graders as part of a lesson on “human development.” (An earlier version required the roughly three-minute video be shown to third, fifth ...

Teachers aren’t happy. It’s not hard to see why

After reviewing some of the results from the West Virginia Education Association’s recent teacher survey, it’s easy to see why the Mountain State’s school system is struggling. A few highlights: 73% dissatisfaction rate with working conditions in the past year vs. 2% satisfaction rate; 62% said they are feeling burnt out — a higher rate than in 2020; 35% said they aren’t confident they’ll remain in the teaching profession (the greatest share of which are “early career” employees); and roughly half of those who said they’ll remain teaching for a while still indicated ...

Libraries in the 21st century

Perhaps you’ve seen those “alternative” weather maps that measure the snow forecast not in inches of accumulation, but in number of books you’ll need to keep yourself entertained until you can get out again. These images, of course, don’t depict an actual forecast, but they reminded us of something very important: Even when the snow is deep and the roads are impassable, you still have a whole world of digital, audio and visual entertainment at your fingertips for free — as long as you have a library card and internet. Libraries have long been imagined as stoic places ...

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid 1

Welcome to the first “The Good, the Bad and the Stupid” of the 2024 regular legislative session. For those who are unfamiliar with this annual tradition: Every Friday while the West Virginia Legislature is in session, we do a roundup of bills, rank them as good, bad or stupid and tell you why.  If there are bills you would like to see gain more traction or ones you’d like to see die, make sure to reach out to your area delegate and/or senator. The Senate suspended regular reading rules during the session’s first week and immediately passed dozens of bills, moving them to ...