Vance Re-elected Pocahontas County Board of Education President

Marlinton, WV – The Pocahontas County Board of Education met for the first meeting of the new fiscal year Tuesday night. The first order of business was issuing the Oath of Office to new board members Jan McNeel and Emery Grimes, returning member Leslie Cain, and new school Superintendent CC Lester. The proceedings then moved to the election of a board president and vice president.

Grimes nominated Kenny Vance for President of the board, seconded by McNeel. It was approved unanimously. For Vice President, McNeel nominated board member Margaret Worth, while Worth nominated Cain. Worth declined the honor, and Cain was approved as Vice President.

Lester recognized all the county schools for their higher than state average attendance last year. He says while the state average was around 90%, Pocahontas County Schools were much higher, well into the mid to upper 90’s.

The Board approved the following items:

A contract with Leslie Goodall to provide occupational therapy services to students during the month of July
A contract with School Messenger, a program used to notify parents of out of the ordinary school closures or other such events
And adoption of math text books.

Board member Emery Grimes brought up a topic he’s heard a lot about recently – the schools BIF disciplinary program. He says he’s hearing complaints about how the program is run. Lester says he was the one who brought the system to the county, and like Grimes, thinks it’s a good system. But he agrees the way its being administered is not how it’s intended to work, saying it shouldn’t be a “gotcha” program to catch kids being bad.

On the personnel agenda, the board approved the following:

Resignation of Devan Simmons as a part time teacher at Hillsboro Elementary School
Employment of Joautumn Hill and Nathalie Richardson as teachers at Marlinton Elementary school
A transfer for Custodian II Frank Barrett from Green Bank Elementary Middle School to Pocahontas County HS
And employment of Deborah McQuain as an intinerant special education teacher for the county.

A request for purchase of a planning period for Michael Dipasquale was tabled until the next meeting. A request to extend a medical leave of absence for Kenneth Cutlip was denied.