Grade shift passes major phase
Books, supplies transfer to schoolsBy MICHAEL ERB, merb@newsandsentinel.com
PARKERSBURG - A massive phase of Wood County Schools' planned grade shift was completed last month when thousands of text books were moved over a four-day period.
This fall all of Wood County's ninth-grade students will attend its high schools while all sixth-graders will move into the junior highs, creating true middle schools. But with the massive movement of students and teachers comes the logistical challenge of making sure classroom materials are moved between schools.
Gary Sall, inventory supervisor for the textbook department of Wood County Schools, said the move began shortly after the end of the school year.
"We had a person at each school who was responsible for packing up the books that would move on to the middle or high schools," he said. "We sent a truck with a couple of people to load and move the books."
Sall said the deliveries went directly from one school to another, bypassing the textbook warehouse located in Lincoln School.
"That way we didn't have to handle the books as many times," he said. "It simplified the process."
The entire job, which encompassed materials moving between 24 schools, took less than a week.
"We had that Friday off due to West Virginia Day," Sall said. "So it really it took them only four days to get them all moved. They did a great job."
Sall said officials at the textbook department now are waiting for delivery of new textbooks, most notably supplies for English language arts, music, journalism/speech and handwriting for primary grades, all of which have new texts adopted this year.
"We'll be getting those in, marking them and sending them out," he said.
Superintendent Bill Niday said the book transfer marks one of the final pieces of this fall's grade shift. Most of the remaining pieces, he said, are logistic issues at the school level, such as making sure supplies are in the correct rooms, teachers are familiar with their new locations and academic teams are set and ready to go.
"We are very comfortable where we are right now in the process," Niday said. "For the most part you've got the same issues you would find at the start of any new school year."
But Niday said this fall will mark a major turning point for Wood County Schools.
"Effectively we will be opening up seven new schools," he said. "The two Parkersburg high schools will have more than 50 percent of their students new to those schools. We're talking 800 to 1,000 students.
"At the middle schools it is 66 percent of their students that will be new to those schools. Really at each school only one grade will return this fall that has been at those schools before."
Niday said while sometimes daunting, the move is also very exciting.
"I see this as a great opportunity, a chance to start off these students and the school year right," he said.
