|Photo by Emma Delk| From left, Marshall County Board of Education President John Miller, Superintendent Shelby Haines, board member Dr. Duane Miller and board member Brenda Coffield review the 2025-26 school calendar during Tuesday’s meeting.
The Marshall County Board of Education held its hearing for the 2025-26 school calendar, with feedback for the calendar collected from MCS faculty favoring a shorter spring break to allow the school year to end before Memorial Day.
Superintendent Shelby Haines said the calendar sent to the West Virginia Department of Education for approval was created based on a survey sent to faculty. The survey included questions regarding how staff would prefer holiday breaks and when they would prefer the school year to start and end.
Based on feedback collected from the surveys, two calendars were made, Calendar A and Calendar B. Staff then voted on which calendar they preferred, with Calendar B receiving 67% of the vote to Calendar A’s 23%. Haines said Calendar B included a shorter spring break, which allows the school year to be over before Memorial Day.
Haines also updated the board on the number of homeschooled students in the county and the number of eligible students who submitted a Notice of Intent to receive the Hope Scholarship. The Hope Scholarship provides vouchers to certain eligible students for private and homeschool educational expenses.
Haines said MCS’s certified net enrollment per the October child count for the current school year is 4,105. This number includes 23 charter school students and 153 homeschooled students.
For the 2025 school year, Haines said MCS received 40 letters of intent for the Hope Scholarship, a jump from the 30 letters of intent MCS received in 2024.
Haines said she feels “very comfortable” speaking as an entity of superintendents in the state about the need for “better tracking” of homeschooled students and Hope Scholarship recipients.
“The superintendents have been working together to speak with our elected officials regarding things like tracking homeschooled students because sometimes people will submit their information for homeschooling, and then, quite frankly, we never see them again,” Haines said. “Whenever they are supposed to turn in their portfolio, they’re supposed to come take the standardized test. When they don’t come, we look for them.”
Haines added that superintendents have also communicated with elected officials “quite frequently” regarding the Hope Scholarship and the use of funding from the program towards parochial schools, especially private parochial schools that “may not even be in the state of West Virginia.”
During her superintendent report, Haines circled back to MCS’ child count, noting that student enrollment continues to decrease by 60 to 70 students every year.
MCS Facilities Director Michael Price gave an update on the progress of John Marshall High School’s new natatorium during his report at the meeting. The 60,000-square-foot John Marshall High School Aquatic Center will be built in collaboration between Marshall County Schools and WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital.
Price said the project was moving forward “quite nicely,” but there is “still a lot to accomplish.” He noted that the “easy part” of creating the John Marshall Aquatic Center layout had been completed, with work now beginning on the “mechanical parts” of the project.
Price said the first HVAC meeting for the project was held two days ago between him and the project engineer, Omni Architectural and Engineer Services. He said the meeting consisted of him telling the engineers how he would like to see things set based on what he was “trying to do for the county.”
“As far as you’ve heard me talk about controls, I want my controls,” Price said. “I want the equipment that I like to use, so there’s still a lot to accomplish here by trying to get this thing put out to bid by May.”
Price added he had received “a lot of phone calls” regarding how the construction would play out in the northwest corner of the John Marshall High School student parking lot.
“There are a lot of questions regarding how we’re going to disrupt the campus,” Price noted. “Yes, there are some challenges, so I’m working on my master plan as far as how things will get set up once this project starts.”
Price said they tried to keep “as much of the student parking lot as possible for the students.” He is currently determining where contractors and materials could be staged.
Board President John Miller questioned how much of the parking lot will be impacted “long term” by the project’s footprint. Price responded that they would lose less than “a quarter of the parking” and that 286 spots would remain after completing the project.
“The parking is all part of the master plan of the site, so I need to make sure everyone understands that campus is going to change,” Price said. “I don’t think it’s quite as inconvenient as some people think, but we have some options. It’s just a lot of moving parts.”