Last summer, Harrison County was shocked to see the West Virginia Department of Education announce a partial intervention into the school system based on finance concerns. The State tapped long-time Hardy County Schools Superintendent Dr. Sheena Van Meter to fill the same role for Harrison. It then gave her a team that includes a former long-time official with 40 years of public education experience in Pendleton County, Charles Hedrick.
Both have years of experience shoehorning the needs of school systems into tight budgets through fiscal discipline and restraint.
At the Oct. 6 Board of Education meeting, Dr. Van Meter laid out the challenges facing Harrison County Schools. Her solutions lay in righting the ship according to the formulae and rules in place now, but also in continuing to make the case in Charleston for an updated school aid funding formula.
She explained that “what we’re dealing with now in our schools and along with a huge enrollment decline and that formula was not designed for a system that had a decline in enrollment.” Van Meter added that “It was essentially built for you to be able to benefit from an increased enrollment, which is just not what’s happening across West Virginia.”
Population decline in schools has long been a West Virginia issue, but that is spreading nationwide as the birthrate has dipped below population rate in the United States in recent years. Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, dropped from 724,113 students in 2002-03 to 373,538 in the current school year. California also ties parts of its school funding to student population.
Dr. Van Meter opened her presentations by reaffirming that all West Virginia school districts must contend with “constraints that are in place.”
She then noted the financial problems that led to the intervention, stating that “When we ended the year last year, we ended it with, in Harrison County, 161 positions over the formula and at a cost of $82,936 per position that equals 1$3,362,648 for professional.” They also employed 78 positions over the formula in service.
Additionally, Dr. Van Meter stated that after recent position eliminations that “We currently employ approximately 153 professional and 71 service positions in excess of positions funded by the state. So that’s talking about what the state funds. That doesn’t include what the levy funds or other sources.”
Then the Board learned that “last year, statewide, only two counties exceeded the formula by more than Harrison County, which was 239 over the total last year.” She added that the bad news for the county continues in that “preliminary number indicates that enrollment has declined in Harrison County over 200 students for the 2026-27 school year.”
This will lead to a further erosion of state school funding aid for Harrison County Schools.
The state school aid formula uses seven steps to establish the financial condition and needs of the school system. Three more steps put the school system’s financial condition into local context. From that comes what a school system will receive from the state. Funding goes to cover the cost of a ratio of personnel to student population. Because of the inherent issues in sparse populations spread over a broad geographic area, school systems in low populated areas receive extra support in the “1,400 Floor” clause that helps fill in the financial gap in those systems.
In 2018, House Bill 206 added tremendous flexibility for county school systems to use the state aid formula. It transformed a more tightly regulated aid regime into block grants. School systems did not have to return school aid formula money, but could use excess as needed.
J. P. Mowery, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Pendleton County Schools, who created the definitive presentation explaining the formula, said that HB 206 allowed that “all basic state aid funds distributed to the county board shall be exempt from expenditure requirements” and also that “a county board may expend the funds in any authorized and allowable manner the county board deems appropriate.
“We get the money whether we employ the people or not,” Mowery explained. He then added that keeping each category of personnel “under the formula” level and “to the good . . . that’s how we balance the budget, keep all of our schools open” in Pendleton and other counties in a similar condition.
Dr. Van Meter illustrated that Harrison County Schools had for years paid for positions “funded from local sources of some sort.” Looking at employment and enrollment over about 10 years, she said “you see a significant drop there with our student enrollment, but you see everything else pretty close to where it was ten years ago.”
During a period where the system lost 1,800 students, it lost 30 professional positions, but gained 70 in service roles.
Also, out of $30.5 million in personnel cost over the funding formula the excess levy only covers about $17.8 million, leaving the remainder covered by local sources and reserves. The tapping of reserves was one major problem that the WVDE cited in their reasons to intervene.
“We’ve got to make some tough decisions,” Dr. Van Meter stated, turning to potential solutions. That started with eliminating positions when the person holding it leaves or transfers. That would only serve as part of the solution, however. She kept future school closings as an option, saying they would “examine school level enrollment, building utilization, determine if closures are necessary.”
“No one wants to close schools,” she explained, “but if that’s something that would become a necessary step . . . that’s definitely something we’d have to look at.”
Savings could also come from maximizing use of resources, such as class sizes and “maximizing instructor utilization.” School systems have also found savings by redefining certain positions in such a way as to make them eligible for federal reimbursement or grant coverage. Dr. Van Meter noted that they will “review utilization of current employees, duties, or responsibilities, and the potential for combining roles. And that’s county wide in schools, and that’s at the central office.”
State law mandates that Dr. Van Meter and her team have a plan in place by May 1. She shared with the Board that she “along with this team of folks that you see sitting back here and some others, will be working hard to get a plan to you guys.”
“We’re gonna tell you what we think needs to happen, and we’re gonna try as hard as we possibly can to get us close to that number of reduction to keep us in good financial stability moving forward.”
A Board member noted that they had worked to not eliminate classroom positions until the last extremis, but the Superintendent replied about cutting employees that “at this point, they’re going to have to be so significant that I think everybody will feel it and feel it pretty intensely.”
She then turned to taking the offensive on the issue of school funding. Dr. Van Meter was outspoken on the issue as Hardy County Superintendent and frequently joined her Potomac Highlands colleagues for the three-plus-hour treks to Charleston to meet with elected and other officials.
“This is a legislative issue,” she stated “and this is something that we’re going to have to continue to fight really hard for in Charleston. We’re gonna have to work with our elected officials and explain the importance of public education and the things we need to keep our schools operating top notch and giving kids everything that kids need.”
“We’re gonna do everything we can, to do what’s best for kids, but we’re gonna have to fight for changes too, because we can’t keep doing this forever.”