State Takeover of Pocahontas Schools Almost Happened in Summer of 2025

This is our third installment of our June, 2026 lengthy interview with Pocahontas School Superintendent Dr. Leatha Williams.

Dr. Williams, you were hired as our new School Superintendent on July, 1, 2025, and we were already under a “State of Emergency” as declared by the WV State Board of Education. How close were we to the state actually taking complete control of our schools; what would that have meant; and how did you manage to prevent that from happening?

“On July 3^rd (2025) I was told that we had a bad special Education review” answered Dr. Williams. “I was also told that there was Central Office disorganization, and it needed to be reorganized. And I said at that point in time to our State Liaison, Ms. Kline, ‘is there anything I can do? Can I go down and take (BOE) President Grimes and talk to (State) Superintendent Kelly?’ and she said ‘I don’t know if it will make a difference, but I will arrange that.’”

“And President Grimes and myself went down and talked to Superintendent Kelly on July 11^th (2025.) And I had done a comprehensive data review of our State of Emergency that was released for Pocahontas County High School, looked at the indicators in the county Offices, and started working on reorganization – I had actually done that before July 1. And at that point in time, Assistant Superintendent Kelly said that he seriously thought we were going to be taken over. He said this plan that you proposed, if you can execute it, that will be a step in the right direction, and I am going to give you some time before you come back to get a full plan together, and you have to do Board training on how to interact with the public.”

“So, to answer that very clearly, we were on the edge of not intervention statue, but complete county takeover. So, one of the things they look at when they do a county takeover is operating effectively and efficiently. And, we all know that in most of the counties taken over, school consolidation happens. I believe that school consolidation would have happened for Pocahontas County. (When that happens,) the Board loses all rights or authority to make any decisions. If you watch any Board meetings in Boone County for example, they have a Board Meeting and they last for about 5 minutes. Everything goes to the State Board (of Education) and is approved there. So, we would have lost total county control on spending, on planning, on anything that you do we would have lost it. And that included facilities management and financial management. So, it would have been drastic and it would have been immediate. We were scheduled for immediate intervention, because we haven’t made the progress points that we needed to make. We had made some growth, but there was a lot of things we still needed to do.”

Had that happened, would we have lost schools to consolidation by the state?

“Well, yes,” replied Dr. Williams. ”When you have a school as small as Hillsboro, when you have a school as small as Marlinton Middle School, then you have to start looking at how do you reconfigure. For example, closing Hillsboro isn’t really an option, unless you start looking at Marlinton Elementary School, because all the students at Hillsboro cannot be absorbed into that facility (Marlinton Elementary School.) Then you have to say, OK, if those students cannot be absorbed into that facility, what can be a facility on this end (of the county) that we can house those students and reconfigure?  Then you have to start looking at 6^th, 7^th and 8^th. Do you keep them all at the middle school or do you put 7^th and 8^th at the high school and 7^th and 8^th from Green Bank at the high school (also?) And then you have a K-6 school at Marlinton Middle School. So, there is a bunch of reconfigurations, and I am not saying that plan was laid out in those words or that exact language, but it was always implied. School consolidation is a part of effective and efficient management of a county. And, that probably would have been something that would have been on the table (if a state takeover had happened.”)

Dr. Williams went on to explain that to avoid a state takeover, she had to agree to, and promise to ensure that not only were the discrepancies between the way we handled things like special education and the way the state requires it to be handled, be corrected but that the Pocahontas County Schools also needed to replace the traditional ways the schools have been run, both academically and regarding both personnel and financial management, with strict adherence to state policies. She said she understands that has upset some staff and members of the public, but it had to be done to avoid the loss of local control and probable school consolidation which would have resulted from a state takeover. She is proud that, because of the efforts of school staff and administrators, the State Board of Education released the county schools from their State of Emergency within 4 months, because it usually takes schools many years to be so released.