BUCKHANNON — The Upshur County Board of Education floated the scenario of closing Buckhannon-Upshur Middle School and two elementary schools during an informational meeting regarding facility usage earlier this month.

On March 14, the BOE held the special meeting to discuss facilities and how to best optimize building use. One major issue, according to Superintendent of Schools Christy Miller, is that the county’s current school enrollments are below the County Educational Facilities Plan projections from 2019.

“The first thing under consideration is student enrollment, which is on the decline,” Miller told the Board. “We have a decline in population at every school in the county. When you think about that decline and you look at our schools and their facilities, the most concerning right now are Rock Cave Elementary School and Washington District Elementary School.”

Rock Cave Elementary was projected for Fiscal Year 2025 to have an enrollment size of 143 students. Miller said the school currently has 112 students. Washington District Elementary was projected to have 137 students for FY 2025, however, that school also has only 112.

While Miller admitted that the difference between the two schools’ enrollment projections and reality is not that large, they “still do have a difference that exists in that situation.”

When factoring the failure to meet the CEFP projections and a list of projects the county is considering, including renovations to the high school and building a new middle school, Miller stated that “there are going to be some decisions that have to be made.”

“There’s a few scenarios I’ve come up with… these are just scenarios,” Miller said. “Nothing is being proposed at this time. We’re not saying that anything is going to happen, but we are just looking to the future… we have to be good stewards of the money that the taxpayers entrust us to utilize to educate our kids.”

Miller explained that her first inclination was to look at Rock Creek and Washington District and figure out what the Board could do if those schools needed to be closed; however the issue of transportation could not be avoided.

“You have to start looking at what are the roads that we’re bringing kids down and what is that traffic time if you put kids here or if you put kids there,” Miller said. “That’s probably not the best idea at this point, particularly thinking about (Washington District) in particular.”

Miller also mentioned that many parents in the Rock Creek area already send their children to French Creek Elementary, which is 4.2 miles from the Rock Creek school, and that the two schools already share buses.

Miller said she then started thinking “way outside the box” with the grade configuration in the county as a whole, starting with Buckhannon-Upshur Middle School and Buckhannon-Upshur High School.

“I thought, ‘Well, if we don’t have the 1,600 and whatever students at the capacity that the high school was originally built to hold, is there something we could do there and think about changing the configuration of our high school and absorbing some of the middle school at the high school,'” Miller said.

The CEFP 2019 projection for the middle school for FY 2025 was an enrollment of 889 students. Miller said the school currently has 718 students. Buckhannon-Upshur High School, which was projected to have 986 students for FY 2025, currently has 817 students.

Miller explained that the idea of combining the high school and middle school would see the combined school have an enrollment of around 1,500 students, keeping in mind that around 70 high school students leave in the morning and afternoon to go to the Fred W. Eberle Technical Center.

However, Miller also explained that she took into account the issue of bringing sixth graders, usually 11 and 12 years old, into the same building as high school age students, and that more grade configurations would be needed.

“So could we look at our buildings and could we come up with a pre-k-four (preschool and kindergarten through fourth grade), find some place where we could just have grades five and six and then make the high school seven-12 (seventh grade through 12th grade)?” Miller rhetorically asked. “Because then that changes some of your populations as well… we’re just thinking about how that might look.”

Miller explained that while these are just some ideas that she’s been tossing around, officials are “going to have to think about doing something.” She also reminded the Board that whatever is decided down the line needs to be the “least disruptive” and is not going to cost them money that they don’t have.

BOE Facilities Director Tim Derico was asked by Miller to explain to the Board how the county’s facilities currently stand. Derico did not mince words.

“To put it as politely, probably, as I can, our buildings are aging and have been for some time,” Derico said. “Union (Elementary) is our newest school and it was built in 1988.”

Derico explained that the roofing at the middle school is probably his “biggest concern in the county,” with parts of the roof having not been repaired properly over the years. The school celebrated its 100th anniversary in February.