MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Monongalia County School System is ready to welcome back students for the first day of the 2024-25 school year.
School buses will be out in full force on Tuesday as thousands of students across the county reunite with classmates, prepare to meet new teachers and get acquainted with new surroundings and school policies. For Monongalia County students, this will include adjustments to new guidelines that will be new for the 2024-25 school year, new construction that is expected to affect some middle school students and new facilities that are on the pike for the new year. School Superintendent Eddie Campbell is excited to start the school year after a busy summer.
“We had a lot of construction projects that will be completed or nearly complete (by the start of the school year),” said Campbell on the anticipation for the new year. “The students at North Elementary are going to see some things different there, we had some work done at the Excel Center, we’ve been in the planning process for several additional projects, the list really goes on,” he said.
The most notable adjustment for Monongalia County students will be the implementation of new cell phone guidelines that will be in affect from grades K-12. To start the 2024-25 school year, every middle and high school student will be given individual Yondr bags that will magnetically close at the beginning of each school day. According to Campbell, this was done after a trial run at two of the county middle schools last year and with approval from teachers, staff and the majority of the parents of students. With some minor pushback expected to start the year, Campbell feels this will greatly benefit the learning environment both in the short and long term.
“What we’re trying to create here is a distraction free learning environment,” said Campbell on WAJR’s Talk of the Town when the topic was discussed. “We’re responding, really, to the concerns of our teaching staff who say students are really, very, distracted (by phones in class),” he said.
As students prepare to adjust to new system wide guidelines, some construction projects will be completed around Monongalia County schools that will cause more changes to start the year. The most noticeable to start the year will be for incoming sixth graders at Suncrest Middle School are expected to see renovations of their classrooms which experienced damage as a result of massive rain storms that in July that damaged the roof of the school annex building. For those around 150 students, they will temporarily have classes at the WVU Innovation Center and administrators expect them to be back with their Suncrest Middle Classmates before the end of the 2024-25 school year.
“We’ve been in the building, getting things set up, we worked with the teachers to get all of their equipment moved, which we did over the past couple of days,” said Campbell on what was done to have Suncrest Middle school students ready for the start of the year. “So it has really been a team effort, I’m appreciative of the flexibility that everyone has shown,” he said.
Campbell also added that the school system hopes to continue the positive trends that have been seen in the classroom and reported on a state level. This includes test scores in reading, math and science that have trended towards improvement since the COVID-19 pandemic lows and have stayed at the top or near the top in the state averages in elementary, middle and high school age groups. As contributing factors such as teacher morale, consistently improving facilities and proactive administrative decisions continue to be addressed throughout the 2024-25 school year, Campbell and and the rest of the Monongalia County School system are ready to continue to help students get ready for the next stage of their lives.
“The true measure of our success as a school system is, really, what comes down the road as these young people become older,” said Campbell. “We are trying to produce citizens that are going to contribute (to the community),” he said.