Marion County School Superintendent receives report card from board of education

Yahoo

15-02-2025

FAIRMONT — Marion County School Superintendent Donna Heston continues to hold the Marion County Board of Education's confidence in her annual performance review.
'She has my confidence,' Board President George Boyles said. 'There's others on the board that really appreciate — she gets into an issue, she always gets me an answer when I ask her a question. A lot of it is just things sometimes off of her head that she knows, that this is what I'm asking about. She's well informed and that's really good to have a person like that.'
The Board of Education evaluated Heston at a special meeting and executive session on Thursday. The board rated Heston on whether she 'meets or exceeds' all five expectations laid out on the official performance rubric.
The five goals the board considers are community engagement, family and student engagement, district operations and planning, learning environment, increasing the number of students proficient in English and mathematics and fostering career and technical education.
Heston had one concrete goal on the rubric — decrease the number of professional and service personnel over the state aid formula by June 2025.
Heston said budgeting and personnel season is right around the corner. Marion County Schools had been third on a list of school districts that are over budget on what the state funding formula pays for. Thanks to Heston's work over the past two years, the school system has dropped to 16th place.
'We're really looking at our student enrollment and addressing those things proactively based upon those numbers,' Heston said. 'The seven percent decrease in what we were over the formula amounts to 6.5 positions that we need to address. As we've done in previous years, it had always our goal — that if somebody wants a job for Marion County Schools, there is one available for them.'
Heston added the school system has been able to keep employees while shedding positions through realignment and redistribution. Heston also said student enrollment has declined again this year, in line with enrollment decreases at other counties in the state. Heston said her administration is working with those decreases in mind so that they can realign and redistribute with the goal of keeping the school workforce strong.
Aside from driving student achievement as a priority, Heston's other goals for the coming year include strengthening school security. She said the School Building Authority granted funds, which after combining them with local funds, will help fortify nine school entrances. The district has applied for a tenth safe school entrance at East Fairmont Middle School. Heston is also looking at facility improvements, such as roof replacements, HVAC and boiler improvements and others prioritized by the district's comprehensive educational facilities plan.
Boyles said they set the superintendent's objectives in September.
'Where she hasn't exceeded them she's got the structure in place and it's just a matter of time to get some of those things further in place,' Boyles said. 'More concretely, she's well on the way to having everything exceeds expectations. So that's why we said she either meets or exceeds.'
Boyles echoed Heston's goals for the coming year, and wants to see progress made on roofing and school security. He added the district obtained a grant for such projects through former U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's office that has to be spent by the end of December.
Boyles is also keeping an eye on what the state legislature is doing this year, with regard to K-12 education.
Boyles was glad to hear Gov. Patrick Morrisey and the state legislature is finally evaluating the outdated school funding formula. He also brought up the Hope Scholarship, which removes money from the public school system and allows parents to spend it with private education providers. Students need to be part of the school system for a set number of days before withdrawing to access the money. If a student returns from private instruction, the money doesn't return with them, however. Boyles wants to see that be part of the discussion in Charleston.
'They've got some opportunities to make some nice adjustments,' he said.