This week, the Roane County Board of Education will consider proposed staffing reductions for the 2025-26 school year.
After considering many different options and gathering community feedback, the reductions proposed are the best option to meet 3 main goals:
Keep both Geary and Walton open as PK - 8 schools so that students remain in their home communities
Align staffing to meet the significant enrollment decline since 2021 and help bring balance to the county’s budget
Maintain the smallest administrative staff for a county our size so that as many resources as practical can remain at the school level
These reductions are necessary because enrollment in Roane County’s five public schools has declined significantly. They are not due to any other current or future financial challenges facing Roane County Schools, but are solely based on this enrollment decline and the state funding lost due to that decline.
Compared to 2010, Roane County now enrolls almost 900 fewer students, with 400 of that decline happening since 2021. While some have questioned homeschooling and Hope Scholarship, the number of Roane County students in these programs has not significantly increased, so the decline is mostly due to school-aged kids no longer living in Roane County.
For Roane County, those 400 fewer students since 2021 represent a funding reduction of about $2.4 million per year for each and every school year going forward, or funding for about 29 teaching positions and 18 school service personnel per year. This is not a one-time loss of funding, but a continuing one.
School | Enrollment Loss Since 2010-11 | Net Positions Reduced from 2010-11 to 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|
Walton | 41% (158 students) | 7.5 |
Spencer Middle | 38% (186 students) ** | 16 |
Geary | 37% (118 students) | 8.75 |
Spencer Elementary | 34% (209 students) * | 12 |
RCHS | 29% (204 students) | 24 |
Transportation, Maintenance, County Office | -- | 11.5 |
*Includes PK - 4 from Reedy, which closed after 2015-16 school year
**Includes 5 - 6 from Reedy, which closed after 2015-16 school year
While the enrollment decline hasn’t happened all at once, in 2020 and 2021, the federal government issued a series of grants to schools across the country to help them respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. This funding, called ESSER (Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief), was intended to help schools address learning loss and make long-term investments like HVAC upgrades, outdoor classrooms, and new equipment and furnishings for hands-on, career-focused learning.
Schools could also use ESSER to help keep teachers and support personnel on staff despite losses of state funding due to enrollment decline. Only positions that were not required by law or policy could be ESSER-funded, so many of these positions were reduced class sizes, increased the number of counselors and social workers in schools (since there is no set number required for either), or provided other additional student services. Across West Virginia, about 1450 positions were paid with ESSER funds in 2023-24.
School Year | ESSER Funded Positions in Roane County |
|---|---|
2021-22 | 26 |
2022-23 | 27.5 |
2023-24 | 22 |
But 2023-24 was the last year that ESSER funds could be used to pay for full-time positions. The federal government gave ESSER funds an expiration date of September 30, 2024, so no new ESSER expenses - including payroll for people paid with ESSER funds - could happen after that date. If schools still had ESSER funds available on September 30, 2024, then those funds would simply be returned to the federal government and not be used.
Last year, knowing that the ESSER funds were going to expire, Roane County started reducing positions. Spencer Middle School lost 8 full-time staff last year -- including 6 teaching positions -- and 2 other positions were reconfigured. Since SMS was moving into a new building, it made sense to do their reductions then.
Finally, to keep resources at the school-level as much as possible, Roane County will continue to have one of the smallest administrative staffs in the state. In 2023-24, Roane County had the smallest administrative staff among counties between 1500 and 2200 students, with a staff comparable to those with many fewer students than that. This requires each administrator to oversee multiple areas of responsibility, but the alternative would require further reductions at the schools.
While the future of our schools and our state continues to be uncertain, as funding will continue to drop with enrollment declines seen in all but a few small regions of the state, efforts like this one will give our students and our communities their best opportunities given the limited resources available. As school leaders across the state have said for years, however, we will continue to see these difficult decisions in front of our boards of education until either our population decline reverses or the Legislature works to improve the antiquated State Aid Formula to meet the challenges our schools face today.