Editor's Log

New bags purchased

Will Parkersburg South High School be "open for business" come late August when students file back to classes?

That seems to be the $64,000 question ... and one upon which Wood County Superintendent Bill Niday is betting his reputation.

The high school's cafeteria is undergoing an extensive remodeling that will force students to eat on campus, thus closing the campus for the lunch periods. Parkersburg and Williamstown high school campuses already are closed.

The cafeteria supposedly is to be done in early August, and the kitchen is to be finished two weeks later.

PSHS's cafeteria is part of the last phase of schools district's major construction that began in 2004 and has far-exceeded the original budget and the $35 million taxpayers approved, along with $15 million from the state School Building Authority and an additional $15 million from the SBA.

The price tag for the remodeling of Parkersburg, Parkersburg South and Williamstown high schools has reached $63 million, and may surpass that before PHS and South are completed.

Niday was jokingly asked by a News and Sentinel reporter recently if his bags were packed, providing the PSHS remodeling isn't completed by the school's opening day. He answered his bags aren't packed but new ones have been purchased.