Mon school district to board the bus for STEM school

Jan. 31—Call it a Renaissance road trip.

"We're planning to take as many teachers as we can get on the charter bus, " Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said during Tuesday night's Board of Education meeting.

He's referring to a scheduled Feb. 12 excursion to Leesburg, Loudoun County, Va., for a tour of the Academies of Loudoun, a standalone school devoted solely to STEM—science, technology, engineering and math.

Campbell, who was a classroom teacher, sports coach and school administrator in Virginia for several years, is using the specialized school in the Commonwealth as the inspiration for the Renaissance Academy here, a similar STEM institution he wants to have open for Mon's high school students by 2027.

The district hired the DLR Group, an international architectural firm that has put up other STEM-centric schools in Colorado and Arizona, to design the academy.

And Mon's BOE just signed off for a $142.6 million bond call voters will be asked to consider during the May 14 primary—so it can actually get the enterprise built on a site of reclaimed land overlooking Interstate 79 near Cassville.

That means, for example, a Mon homeowner living in a house appraised at $100, 000 would be asked to pay an additional $62.40 annually in taxes over the 30-year course of the bond.

One owning a home appraised at $200, 000 would see an increase of $124.80 on the annual ticket.

Homeowners in dwellings appraised at $300, 000 would be asked to kick in an additional $187.20 a year in taxes.

That information, plus computer animations and other particulars, is on the district's website at https://boe.mono.k12.wv.us /, which Campbell encourages residents to visit, if they haven't already.

In the run up to the primary, meanwhile, Campbell and board members are banking that taxpayers, already known for their signature support of an excess levy for education that brings an additional $30 million to district coffers, will vote in affirmative of this one, also.

With the country's academic landscaping shifting more to career technical education and away from traditional college in the wake of the pandemic, Mon County, in many ways, Campbell said, has already signaled that charge.

That's courtesy of the citizen input that went into the district's 2020-30 Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan, or CEFP, as it is commonly known across the state.

The CEFP is a paradigm-shifting roll of the dice updated every 10 years.

Campbell likens the ever-changing document to a visionary owner's manual, of sorts.

Mon's 2000 CEFP saw the construction of a new University High School. The 2010 edition called for a green school, with Eastwood Elementary now successfully marking all those boxes.

With the bond set for the ballot and the upcoming road trip to Loudoun County, the selling of the Renaissance Academy to Mon parents and taxpayers now begins.

It will carry gleaming learning labs, corporate partners (hopefully) and the opportunity for students to avail themselves of specialized options for learning, without putting their core classes on hold for year, or surrendering elective courses altogether, as is the case now.

Those levels of technology, plus the more-advanced textbook courses that will go with it, are what Nancy Walker, a longtime BOE incumbent is emphasizing when people in the community ask her about it, she said last month.

Forget that old separation of "vo-tech, " she said.

"This is an 'every high school student opportunity, ' so they can grow their mindset, " the longtime member reiterated. "I keep trying to say to folks."

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