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In all, the board approved the transfer of 76 of the 79 professional personnel recommended for transfer, as well as all 59 recommended service personnel.

The board approved all 84 professional and 67 service personnel recommended to be cut.

Elementary school counselors

Of the professional personnel who were cut or transferred, six elementary school counselor positions were eliminated.

According to Superintendent Tim Hardesty, there are 12 elementary schools in the county that each have a counselor. He said after removing those positions, the six remaining counselors would each have two elementary schools to cover.

The total cost of the six counselor positions that were cut, he said, is $510,946.

Hardesty said counselors were added to the county a few years ago due to a change in the school funding code. He said a bill passed in the 2025 legislative session will also require public and charter schools to provide two counselors per 1,000 students, or one counselor for every 400 to 450 students in elementary school and one for every 250 to 300 students in high school, beginning Aug. 1.

As enrollment in Cabell County Schools continues to decline, Hardesty said only one counselor is needed per two elementary schools.

For example, he said Nichols Elementary only has 237 students enrolled, meaning its counselorÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s position was cut and the school may share one with another school.

Still, Jennifer McComas, counselor at Nichols, asked the board Monday during an open hearing to preserve her position. She said, as mental health needs grow and children are affected by the opioid crisis, social media, or are struggling with relationships, abuse and thoughts of self harm, they need to have connections with their school counselors beyond weekly guidance.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œDropping in for a day or two will greatly decrease this visibility and make it harder to build a relationship. I stay busy in my little school, and I am there every day. I know I make a difference in my school,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� McComas said.

Hardesty said while he takes responsibility for all of the recommended RIFs and transfers, the county needed to cut back on personnel overall to account for its decline in enrollment and state aid.

Since 2014, he said the county is down in headcount enrollment by 2,043 students. He said this equates to a loss of more than $16 million. Still, the county continues to grow its personnel each year, and now has 118 more employees than were employed in 2014.

Hardesty said, with the funding the school district is expecting to receive from the state this year, it can support about 1,430 employees. He said Cabell County Schools currently has more than 1,700 employees.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWhat IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™m presenting this evening as recommended changes from next year is not a reflection on Ms. McComas, any employee thatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s here or listed in that form, their work, their values and the value of what they do, or anything personal. I am tasked to work towards presenting a budget that will be sustainable for the future, and where we currently are is just not sustainable,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� Hardesty said.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œThese changes alone donÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t even get us to where we are sustainable, but it is a first step if we continue to lose enrollment, as it seems the trend is currently. ThatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s just going to continue to compound the problem as we move forward.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

Hardesty told The Herald-Dispatch an employee sharing responsibility between two schools, while accounting for travel, will not necessarily translate to a pay raise.

Career Literacy

The personnel approved for RIF or transfer also included 24 career literacy teachers, which Hardesty said represented $1,816,301.

Hardesty said the career literacy course was created for middle schools by Cabell County nine years ago and is not available in any other county in the state that he knows of. He said each middle school also has an English language arts teacher who also focuses on reading and writing and covers the same core content standards.

He also mentioned six of those positions were at Barboursville Middle School, where he will be recommending the creation of six new positions for social studies, ELA, math and science teachers. He said those teachers will create a Team C, as current staffing at Barboursville Middle will not afford all students to fit on two teams as at the other middle schools.

But Tracy McClanahan, a career literacy teacher at Barboursville Middle, vouched for the program, saying it gives students specific help with informational texts and provides unique experiences like job shadowing and exploration and helps with learning disabilities.

Board member Linda Childers said she was worried about ELA teachers shouldering all of the responsibility of those core standards.

Barboursville Middle career literacy teacher David Watson said students will always have a better performance with more review of their materials or more time to read. He suggested the school could cut costs by doing away with consumable textbooks and sticking to digital materials.

Hardesty said school administrators had to choose between having a Team C and sticking to a ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œmiddle school conceptÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� or keeping the career literacy program, of which they chose the former.

Technical support and training specialists

Five technical support and training specialists were also approved for RIF or transfer.

Hardesty said those five positions that are being cut represent $459,400. He said the specialist positions were created with additional funding provided during the COVID-19 pandemic, which expired in September.

Before the pandemic, Hardesty said technical support was an extracurricular job by two teachers in the middle school buildings called SYSOPs. He said the positions are being cut while the board decides if thereÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s a path forward without employing all five technical support and training specialist employees or returning to its SYSOP program.

But four of the technical support and training specialist employees who are employed at middle schools throughout the county said they have had hundreds of requests since they took their jobs, and teachers and students will not have access to immediate support daily without them.

Felicia Backus, the specialist at Barboursville Middle, said although enrollment is shrinking, the county is making its resources less reliable by eliminating support. She brought up how much money the district has invested in recent years in iPads, robots, makerspaces and other technological equipment and software that she feels could go to waste if teachers feel it wonÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t work properly.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œMaking this investment and cutting the technology specialist is kind of like buying a new fleet of buses and then firing the mechanics,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� Backus said.

Extracurriculars

The list of RIFs and transfers also included several extracurricular contracts for staff covering theater programs, FFA, speech and debate forensics and robotics, among other after-school clubs.

Hardesty said these positions may have been put on the list as several contracts are moving around, meaning that employee may no longer be available to work with the program, or the contract is just being changed.

He said some of those extracurriculars were also created through pandemic or grant funding.

Hardesty said of the hearings, ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œThereÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s a consistent theme: Everyone loves what they do. They do it very well, and weÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™re very fortunate to have them all. I can attest to that because IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ve seen them in action.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

Hardesty said, in two to five years of maintaining its current budget with a declining state funding, it will have diminished its savings.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œAt the end of the day, we cannot continue down the road where we canÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t pay our bills,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� he said.