| By Dianne Weaver
It's showdown time on funding school consolidation in Mingo County.
State education officials have drawn a deadline because the Mingo school board has failed to comply by closing their community schools.
The heat has been turned up by a new state audit of the Mingo system, which could mean the state might take over the schools a second time.
Clancy Williams, the director of the state School Building Authority, is asking Mingo to decide immediately whether to consolidate its high schools or face losing millions of dollars in SBA funding.
Williams said in a letter to Mingo County Superintendent Brenda Skibo that decision time is now.
The same day another letter was sent to Mingo County from the Office of Education Performance Audits, saying it began a state school board-ordered review of Mingo schools.
The state school board ordered the audit last month to gauge county compliance with its ten-year Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan, which includes the creation of the consolidated school.
Some Mingo school board members claim it is strong-arm tactics, saying there are many unanswered questions beyond the mandate to consolidate community schools.
The SBA has offered to award Mingo County $17 million dollars over the next two years to consolidate Williamson, Burch and Matewan high schools into a new Mingo South High School.
The SBA has quit claiming school consolidation saves money, but contends it improves the quality of education, although many children are on school buses an hour or more twice a day.
Anti-consolidation school board members say the SBAs money is not enough money to open the new school, and the board does not have a deed to the strip mining site where the school would be built.
Massey Coal is still extracting from the proposed site.
The cash-strapped state School Building Authority may want to move on with other projects.
Mineral County has returned $12 million dollars to the agency. The authority had awarded the county the money in 2003 to build a new Keyser Middle School on the condition it pass a school bond. The bond failed last May.
The Mingo county board has voted against using state money for the consolidated school and has suspended a contract with its construction management company.
The Mingo board has also hired Charleston attorney Jim Lees, who is expected to focus on constitutional issues regarding a non-elected state department usurping the power of elected officials.
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