Pocahontas Schools Now Ranked 9th in WV

At the August 18^th Pocahontas County Board of Education (BOE) meeting, it was revealed by a board member and confirmed by the Superintendent of Schools, that the Pocahontas County School District is now rated in 9^th place academically in the state, an improvement from their 15^th rating a year ago. Although not a lot of details about this rating were discussed at the meeting, it was brought up during the board member comments at the end of the meeting by member Emery Grimes.

Also, at the meeting, the members discussed two proposed policy revisions that are out for public comment. They were:

1. The 3^rd reading of Policy 9270 which considers charging a fee of 1/7^th of the Hope Scholarship amount to non-public school enrolled home school students whose parents do not receive the Hope Scholarship, but who take an academic class or participate in an extracurricular non-academic activity. There was a lot of opposition to this expressed by board members, so it was tabled for more discussion at a work session to be held before their next meeting on September 1^st. Since any parent homeschooling a student in the state only needs to apply for the Hope Scholarship to receive it, there are currently no home-schooled students who are not receiving the Hope Scholarship money applying to take courses in the schools at this time.
2. The 3^rd reading of Policy 2371, which is similar to policy 9270, but applies to non-public school enrolled home-schooled students who do receive the Hope Scholarship funds. A motion was passed that would exclude those students from paying to participate in sports or other non-academic extracurricular activities, but any student attending under this would be subject to the same regulations and discipline as enrolled students. They will move forward at the next meeting with the 3^rd reading of that policy revision. There will be further discussions to determine the percentage of their Hope Scholarship funds those taking academic classes will be charged.

There were two delegates who addressed the board members at this meeting:

1. Aiden Jordan, a Senior at PCHS this year, said that the Pocahontas Schools do not define “Compelling Circumstances” as required by the state, in-order-to allow students with compelling circumstances to graduate early without attending four complete years at the high school. He said compelling circumstances that would enable a student, who has all the needed credits to graduate, might include purposes such as beginning college early entering the military or trade school early, but not include just wanting to finish earlier. Later in the meeting, it was announced by the superintendent that they will be defining those compelling circumstances.
2. Dottie Brock, said that home schooled kids should not be charged anything to take classes or participate in extracurricular activities.

Uriah Cummings, the WV School Financial Operations Officer, said that calling for 5 years of forensic audits of the schools would be expensive and unnecessary without identifying specific suspected irregularities, and the county schools’ past audits have not shown any major problems, so they are classified as a “low risk” school system.

The board also passed the recommended personnel actions, as well as routine agenda items.

School Superintendent Dr. Leatha Williams explained the schools’ 2026-2027 goals:  to reduce chronic absenteeism by 4%: Increase family and community engagement by 20%: and increase academic achievement. She laid out their plans for achieving these goals.

The members also voted to return 3 expelled students to class this fall, and said another one will meet that standard shortly.