Stratton label sparks concern

By Esteban Fernandez

cnhi west virginia

BECKLEY — Last year, the chairperson of the Stratton Elementary Local School Improvement Council approached Raleigh County School District Superintendent Serena Starcher to see if anything could be done to raise test scores at the school.

“Recognizing that we were facing this problem, we went to Dr. Starcher and said, we have these test scores that are really low,” Brian Christopher Brown, chairperson of the LSIC, said. “We realize that we have the special needs population that’s dragging the scores down. However, there are some programs that we would like to put into place. What can you help us with? We basically begged her for any type of support. We were willing to go in and pay for tutors. She said her hands were tied.”

The West Virginia Department of Education classified Stratton Elementary School as a Comprehensive Support and Improvement School at the end of September. This comes after three years of failing to make progress on its Balance Scorecard, which the state uses as a way to track school performance. Once a school is classified as a CSI school, it has three years to make improvements. These schools are the lowest 5% performing in the state.

“So now that work begins,” Starcher said at a Raleigh County Board of Education meeting on Sept. 28.

However, Brown said the problems at the school are longstanding and systemic. Stratton began life as the all-Black high school in Beckley. Decades after integration, the school was torn down and rebuilt as an elementary school, which Brown said was built with an emphasis on special needs kids. The problem was, he said, the school district provided no teachers with the qualifications to serve students with special needs. The combination of kids who have special needs and no qualified teachers to tend to them leaves the school caught in a Catch-22.

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“So the school is being stigmatized,” Brown said. “Teachers don’t want to teach there because they know they’re going to deal with people with behaviors, and additionally, high-functioning students that are still able to perform, but they have autism and some of the other challenges, their test scores are tabulated in with the regular matriculating students. So, Stratton has an inordinately high average of students with special needs, so their test scores are being dragged down by those students that are being directed there that don’t even live within district.”

Another structural problem exists. Brown said whenever there’s a reduction in force of district employees, it comes out of Stratton because many of the teachers aren’t tenured. This breaks any continuity a teacher develops with students. The challenge that comes from serving special needs students also discourages employee candidates from desiring to work at Stratton, but the district still sends students to the school.

Brown compared Stratton Elementary with Hollywood, Maxwell Hill, Stanaford and Cranberry-Prosperity elementary schools. Those schools also have their own special needs population, but the children have issues so severe their test scores aren’t tabulated with those of the school’s general population. Meanwhile, the deck is stacked against schools like Stratton, Beckley and Mabscott elementary because the kids there have special needs or behavioral issues but still have their test scores count toward the whole despite receiving no extra support for those students. Brown said the school board has stacked the deck so it’s the district’s economically disadvantaged schools that must hold the line.

“We have a systemic, racial and socioeconomic bias that exists from the Board of Education toward these schools,” Brown said.

Superintendent Starcher did not return a phone call by press time. Raleigh County Board of Education President Larry Floyd pushed back against Brown’s arguments.

“It’s not the special needs kids,” Floyd said. “I don’t think that would bring the school to a comprehensive school. I may be wrong, but in my opinion, I wouldn’t think so because schools for the most part have some population status for the kids, some have more than others, but that’s what we’re dealing with. Not just in West Virginia but all over the country.”

Floyd added Stratton is no different than any other school, in that sometimes it just needs a little extra help, extra coaching with test scores. He said the state doesn’t give the school any extra money to solve its issue but sends coaches to work with students and teachers in raising test scores.

“The school system is basically trying to throw support that’s available to the school, and all schools, actually, to make them a very successful school,” he said.

But extra coaching and academic support is what Brown and Kristi Williams Dumas approached Starcher over last year. He said they even offered to pay for tutors, secure access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math labs, as well as establishing outside partnerships to help support the students. They even began a dialogue with the county’s state representatives, but they said Starcher shot down any attempt at conversation.

Brown returned frequently to Starcher’s comments that her hands were tied or that she wasn’t able to direct resources to the school. Resources to schools are dictated by the state aid formula, which is outdated and in severe need of updating. The state legislature has mandated a school provide resources for students with special needs but hasn’t included funding for those resources in the state aid formula. Those resources are usually in the form of qualified professionals for that specific student population. The inadequacy of the state aid formula has been a particular bugbear for the Board of Education in Marion County, which has frequently pointed out the difficulty of serving special needs students according to the requirements set by the legislature, but without the financial backing from lawmakers.

Brown said the school didn’t find out it had been placed on CSI status until the news broke in The Register- Herald on Sept. 28. From his understanding, parents weren’t notified either. Brown said from his perspective, the news has left the teachers and staff at the school feeling very demoralized.

“They feel like their efforts have gone unnoticed and unrecognized,” Brown said. “All of the hard work and dedication that they put in has been completely glossed over, and they have been absolutely set up to fail.”

Brown said the teachers and staff at that school are very dedicated to their students. They literally chase kids and stop them from fighting, he said, stopping all kinds of behaviors they’re not equipped to handle without professional support. So far, one teacher has walked out this year, he said. Brown said he’s observed them to feel neglected and beat up on.

Brown has lost all confidence in Starcher’s ability to handle the situation. He called on her to resign for turning a blind eye to the situation last year. The problem requires a more proactive superintendent, one who can begin to tackle the structural challenges inherent to the school, he said.

“It’s important for people to understand the bias that the school system, the board, has placed an unfair bias based on the way that they have structured sending the kids to certain schools,” Brown said. “And then those schools, not having the adequate resources creates an unfair and unlevel playing field that, unless it’s corrected, Stratton will never be able to pull their test scores up to any significant degree.”