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OPINIONS
Editorial: Community needs answers to concerns about new school
The Huntington City Council does not want to lose two middle schools to a nearby unincorporated area of Cabell County. City officials don't want the Enslow and Beverly Hills neighborhoods to lose the parts of their identities that come with having middle schools in them.
On the other hand, the Cabell County Board of Education sees the need to replace Enslow Middle School. Thirty years ago, Enslow Junior High had 530 students. This year's enrollment for Enslow Middle -- same building, same number of grades -- was 256. And enrollment is not expected to trend upward significantly in the foreseeable future.
Enslow will be 100 years old soon. It does not comply with requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and retrofitting the building to comply would be more expensive than building a new one.
For various reasons, such as not having a site available, Enslow was left out of the school bond election two years ago, when Cabell County voters decided to build new schools to replace the existing West, Cammack, Barboursville and Milton middle schools. Thus, the school board must go to the School Building Authority for money, but the SBA will say Enslow is too small to replace. For Cabell County to get money to replace Enslow, it will have to consolidate with Beverly Hills.
The school board says there is no site available in the existing Enslow district for a new school. Thus, the board has pretty much decided to consolidate Enslow and Beverly Hills and build a new school on Norway Avenue next to the Career Technology Center. That site is outside city limits. It's close to the city, but it's still outside corporation limits.
Monday night, the City Council passed a resolution asking the school board to keep the new middle school in the city. Councilman Jim Insco sponsored the resolution and said he has several concerns about the site. First, the access road to the Career Technical Center property floods, he said. Also, Norway Avenue is not adequate for the bus traffic that would use it, he said.
Upon questioning by Councilman Cal Kent, city attorney Scott McClure said the city fire and police departments would not be responsible for servicing the school unless they signed mutual aid agreements with a volunteer fire department or the Cabell County Sheriff's Department.
Parents may have some transportation and safety concerns, too. School buses would have to carry 256 students along and across U.S. 60 twice a day to get to the school from the Enslow neighborhoods. Also, traffic on Norway Avenue has increased since the Wal-Mart store opened a few years ago. That plus the school bus traffic for nearly 800 students causes significant safety concerns.
And there is the question of civic pride, of seeing two schools in town relocate to a spot outside town. After Monday's meeting, school board member Suzanne Oxley said she would support allowing the city to annex the site so the city can provide police and fire protection. That is something that should be done early in the process before the school board reaches the point of no return in planning.
Clearly, segments of the public have serious questions about the location of the new school. If the school board insists on building a consolidated middle school at the Career Technical Center site, it has some work to do in getting public support. It will have to address all the concerns above and others that are sure to come up.
The deadline for securing SBA money is only a few months away, so the school board should start its public outreach soon.
