VCATS 10 Report Share Posted March 10, 2005 Is Wise County closing high schools. I heard Pound and Appalachia If so it will put a strain on LPD next year for football games. Maybe the Bearcats will be in the LPD next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wisecav72 10 Report Share Posted March 10, 2005 i thought that they already decide to make the move over to the lpd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMan 3,569 Report Share Posted March 10, 2005 V-High B&M'd to the VHSL to play in the HOGO instead of the LPD. When they didn't get their way, they decided to stay in the Highlands. However, you are right about one thing...it will give V-High more opportunity to schedule Class A schools... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
89bluedevil 10 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lee_fan 10 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 The Kingsport paper reported today that the superintendent is going to recommend to the school board (at this coming monday night's meeting) to close Pound, St. Paul, and Appalachia. The closed school's students will be sent to J.J. Kelly, Coeburn, and Powell Valley respectively. If approved, this will take effect this coming August, and will really send other schools scrambling to fill their football schedules, escpecially if one or more of the schools is assigned AA status. The schools absorbing students will be renamed, with new school colors and new mascots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
89bluedevil 10 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 Why rename the schools if they add students? I can see a lot of Powell Valley people raising h*ll about that. That would be a lot of tradition and pride affected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hhstigerfan 12 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 The three new schools in Wise Co could form their own little district with Lee High in AA. Then they could quit whining about "there ain't nobody near us". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmarcum 10 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 Oh I can only hope so Well appalachia would go to pv and pound to jj kelly i bet. That doesnt help much but better than nothing I guess. Anything to help out my boys at Kelly but they will only get better each year anyways. GO GRUNDY!! GO JJ KELLY!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VHSFan999 10 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 It would be kinda sad to see a great football program like Appalachia come to an end. They have done a lot with very little every year. Plus it would end a great rivilary between Appalachia and Powell Valley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beamerball 566 Report Share Posted March 15, 2005 Well...it looks like those schools will stay open. Wise County School Board fires superintendent Tuesday, March 15, 2005 By STEPHEN IGO Times-News WISE - A packed house roared with approval Monday when Wise County School Board member Robert Mullins announced "severance and termination" of Michael Basham as the county school division's superintendent, following Basham's proposal last week to close three high schools at the end of this school year. Monday's school board session needed all the seating J.J. Kelly High School's auditorium had to offer and then some. The Virginia State Police, county deputies and town of Wise police officers were also well-represented, and while the throng was often boisterous, it was also good-natured throughout. A neighborly, even cheery attitude and patience were in abundance and needed. The school board went into closed session immediately upon convening in order to discuss a personnel matter involving termination, resignation or reassignment. By the end of the evening's first closed session, the crowd joined to clap and shout in unison: "We're not leaving." After the board reconvened, Mullins announced that Basham "is terminated as of this evening." Mullins said the reason for the lengthy closed session was the hammering out of "an agreement in principle" between Basham's attorney, the school board and the board's legal counsel. Mullins said the terms of severance still had a few minor points to clear up, requiring yet another closed session. The crowd shared a groan and a few scattered shouts of discontentment, but board member Ann Gregory explained the legal requirements all school boards must abide. "We appreciate your patience. We understand this is very trying," Gregory said. She urged the public to appreciate the school board's responsibility to discharge its duties as required by law. Personnel matters involve privacy protections and are one of the allowable exceptions to public meetings under the Freedom of Information Act. Mullins did not specify what the continuing negotiations in closed session would involve, but Basham has about three years left on his current contract, which would imply contract buyout talks were part of Monday's deliberations behind closed doors. Supervisor John Peace II, who served as the chairman of that board last year and was one of a number of supervisors present Monday, said during the second closed session it was "sad it came to this point." "The main thing the people want is options," Peace said. "They want facts and figures and a well-thought-out plan well ahead of ... well, well ahead of the end of this school year. The way this all came about wasn't right. It's just real sad we couldn't have worked together." School consolidation has festered for at least the past three years in Wise County, after Appalachia High School was the only one of six high schools in the county left out of a long-range, $54 million renovations plan approved by the school board. Appalachia residents have accused the board and Basham of harboring secret plans to spring a consolidation scheme on the county ever since. Things began to heat up last fall when the school board agreed, 5-3, to Basham's proposal to hire an outside consultant to provide a resource management study. Again, Appalachia residents sounded the alarm that the study was a ploy to bring consolidation into the county via a back door. Last month when the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute of Richmond presented the study, suspicions of consolidation coalesced. During the CEPI presentation, school board Chairwoman Margaret Craft promised the public an opportunity to comment on the study at a later date. However, last week began a series of unexpected moves on different fronts that brought a simmering situation to the boiling point. On Monday, citizens in St. Paul and Appalachia asked the Wise County Circuit Court to grant an injunction declaring the CEPI study illegal, and to enjoin Basham from using it to recommend consolidation. On Wednesday, Basham made public his intention to recommend to the board - during Monday's meeting at J.J. Kelly High - the closure of St. Paul, Appalachia and Pound high schools at the end of the current school year. The announcement touched off a furor in Wise County. On Thursday, the Wise County Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution opposing consolidation and directed the county administrator to explore options and recommendations for the future of the school division wholly separate from the school board. On Friday, Basham rescinded his school closures proposal because of the mood of the communities and the resolution approved by the supervisors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coachftbl 10 Report Share Posted April 5, 2005 So what is the new information on this issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMan 3,569 Report Share Posted April 5, 2005 The issue is currently dead and the School Super was fired... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beamerball 566 Report Share Posted April 5, 2005 Yeah, I guess its like "G" said, the issue is dead at the moment, however I did see this in the k-times news today. What else is new though? Its not like no one knew this already. Like the writer says, "it's no secret." I guess its just another reminder that eventually consolidation will happen in Wise, and it probably (and unfortunately for them) will be Appy. Seems like there is no way around it. Almost like a disease affecting southewst virginia spreading slowly throughout each county moving west to east..lol. Seriously though, I'd say Wise will have to go through the consolidation process sooner or later. http://www.timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3486953 Declining enrollment fuels Wise County consolidation debate Tuesday, April 05, 2005 By STEPHEN IGO Times-News WISE - It is no secret Wise County's public school enrollment has steadily declined during the past three decades. But enrollment is just one of many factors - renovations required for aging high school facilities is another - fueling the consolidation debate. Last month the Wise County School Board fired Superintendent Michael Basham after he revealed his recommendation that the board close three of the county's six high schools - Pound, St. Paul and Appalachia. The public uproar ended Basham's tenure, but the real debate over the long-term future of the school division may have just begun. In the 1970s the school division served far more high school students than today. The existing high schools were themselves built to serve a new era of students. For example, Powell Valley High School is a mid-1950s consolidation of aging high school buildings in Big Stone Gap and East Stone Gap. Many residents in East Stone Gap at the time opposed the closure of their school, but PVHS is as much a fixture on the high school scene now as its predecessors were during the previous decades. Five of the county's six high schools were built in the 1950s. St. Paul was built in the 1960s. Ron Vickers, supervisor of business and finance for the school division, says data on the target maximum student population for those buildings isn't available. "There's nothing solid to really set my feet on," Vickers said of his search. Instead, Vickers referred to the resource management study conducted by Richmond-based Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute (CEPI), which focused its analysis not on maximum capacities of whole buildings, but individual classrooms in the six high schools. CEPI pointed out that the average size of a high school classroom in Wise County is about 400 square feet. The norm for modern schools is between 600 and 700 square feet. Wise County's declining student enrollment trend began in the mid-1970s. In 1977-78 there were 9,965 students attending elementary and high schools in Wise County. Five years later (1981-82) the total had slipped to 9,750. There were 3,513 secondary - or high school, grades 8-12 - students in 1977-78, and by 1981-82 the total number of high school students was 3,378. By 1991-92 the combined elementary and secondary head count was 8,448, and by 1995-96 the total had slipped again to 7,882. The total number of 8th- through 12th-grade secondary students was 3,397 in 1991-92 and 3,313 by 1995-96. In the three school years between that five-year period of the early 1990s, the high school population had actually rebounded to a high of 3,476. By 2000-01 the total student population was down to 6,951. In 2002-03 it was 6,749; in 2003-04 it was 6,693. For the current school year it is 6,674. Compared to the total student population of the mid- to late-1970s, that's a decline of more than 30 percent. Looking at enrollment numbers over the decades for individual high schools is skewed somewhat because Pound High School once included seventh-graders and eighth-graders in the count, and now only grades 9-12. Powell Valley houses only grades 9-12, and the other four - J.J. Kelly, Coeburn, Appalachia and St. Paul - are home to grades 8-12. Still, the downward enrollment trend seems to have hit some high schools more than others. St. Paul High School has always been the smallest in terms of student enrollment and is also the only one of the six that has exhibited a stable student population since the late 1970s. It has maintained a total student body of about of 200 students. The most drastic declines at the other high schools seem to have taken a grip from the mid-1990s onward. For example, Pound had 505 students in 1977-78; 490 five years later in 1981-82; back up to 524 in 1991-92; and 504 in 1995-96. That's a 15-year stretch of enrollment stability in defiance of the overall trend. By 2000-01, however, that trend had more than caught up with Pound. That year it had 312 students, a loss of nearly 200 in just five years. There are 265 students attending Pound High School this school year compared to 524 in 1991-92. The other span-of-time enrollment glimpses at each of the other five high schools are: • Appalachia: 429 students in 1977-78 and 367 by 1981-82; 406 in 1991-92 and 358 by 1995-96; and 246 in 2001-01, 266 this school year. • Coeburn: 659 in 1977-78; 686 in 1981-82; 675 in 1991-92; 706 in 1995-96; 431 in 2000-01; and 403 this school year. • J.J. Kelly (Wise): 952 students in 1977-78; 859 by 1981-82; 843 in 1991-92; 791 by 1995-96; 590 in 2000-01; and 502 this school year. • Powell Valley (Big Stone Gap): 768 students in 1977-78; 778 by 1981-82; 688 in 1991-92; and 640 by 1995-96; 551 in 2000-01; and 494 this school year. • St. Paul: 200 in 1977-78; 198 in 1981-82; 184 in 1991-92; 223 in 1995-96; 206 in 2000-01; and 202 this school year with a low of 186 during the most recent five-year period recorded in 2003-04. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hhstigerfan 12 Report Share Posted April 5, 2005 Hey G-Man, speaking of closing/consolidation, when is Pocahontas going to close? I read a while ago that the county was considering closing Pocy down. Is it still going to happen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMan 3,569 Report Share Posted April 5, 2005 Don't know...I would guess in the next couple of years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJ3 10 Report Share Posted April 8, 2005 they've been talking about closing pocy for YEARS now....i dont think they'll do it for a while Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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