School Superintendent Williams Explains the Proposed Abolishing of Positions at PCHS
Concerned about the numerous posts on social media criticizing the abolishment of open and unfilled positions at Pocahontas County High School (PCHS,) Superintendent Dr. Leatha Williams has written a long letter explaining the reasons this benefits the students and staff. When we receive a digital copy of that open letter, it will be posted on our website -alleghenymountainradio.org- with this story.
On Friday, January 16th, we interviewed Dr. Williams, and she summarized her reasoning for these positions being abolished.
“So today what I would like to do is just give a mid-year update,” said Williams. “I know that there have been some significant postings on social media platforms, especially Facebook, discussing and looking at recent changes that are being made to staffing at the high school.”
“When I got here in July, it was not an appropriate time to look at reorganization and restructuring of staffing at the school. Since I have been here for several months, I have spoken to multiple high school teachers and administrators, and talked about the schedule and talked about reorganizing it to move from a seven period-a-day schedule to a block schedule.”
“We are now currently at the point in the school year where we have to start scheduling for the next year, and in order to do that, I have to look at positions we have available, positions that are filled, and positions that are vacant. So, in starting that evaluation process, I looked at the high school schedule, I’ve looked at establishing some different programs in our CTE pathway for our students. And, part of that is looking at vacancies that haven’t been filled. So, we have several vacancies at the high school that have not been filled -meaning there is no one in those jobs.”
“We want to create new things at the high school and address concerns, such as the concern that was brought to us at the January 6th board meeting, which is we don’t have a high school counselor. We want our kids to be prepared for college, and we want them to have the appropriate assistance. In order to do that, since no one is applying for the Counselor’s position, I have evaluated that position. I am gong to abolish it on the January 20th board meeting, and establish a Graduation Coach. Since I’ve gotten here, I have also moved Missy Hill (-Doss) by mutual agreement or by posting (as a Counselor to the high school) -she actually applied for the job So, we do have a Counselor there who meets the guidelines in state code. But, to add additional services and help for her, a Graduation Coach can do that.”
“I have also looked at other vacancies at the high school, which include the Business Pathway in CTE, the social Studies position in CTE, in our core content area, and our ELA. I’ve also looked at class sizes; we have multiple sections in all of these classes that have between two and seven students. In preparing for our kids, we want to start doing micro credentialing and we want to start doing programs that can offer them an Associates Degree till they are career-ready. Among those programs are the Practical Nursing Pathway, Medical Assistant, looking at phlebotomy, and earlier in the school year our board voted to start a JROTC Program.”
“To be fiscally responsible in a time where we are seeing counties that are not, I have to look for positions that we can repurpose into these new positions. That’s why on the agenda you are seeing positions that are being abolished. I want to be clear, no one is losing their job. There is no one in these jobs. Hopefully, we are going to attract new people to our county, or have people move into these positions where we can better serve our students and meet their needs.”
“So moving forward, after we have the January 20th board meeting, I would hope that as we move through personnel season, we will have these positions re-posted into new positions that create new and better opportunities for our students in Pocahontas County Schools.”
“So, that is the reason we are abolishing some positions. We need those positions to re-purpose them. The reason that we couldn’t do that earlier in the year is that you don’t change the schedule in the middle of the year. when you are developing a new schedule, you start looking at staffing and how you can best support that. Thank you very much.”
Thank you for explaining this Dr. Williams.
Story By
