Nicholas County Schools superintendent, board member resigns; bid for new school over budget

Both Burge-Tetrick and Penix had served in their roles since 2016, the same year deadly flood waters damaged both Richwood Middle and High schools and Summersville Middle School.

In spring 2018, the district was awarded $177 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state to replace those schools, with 90% coming from FEMA.

Then, board members opted for fixed Section 428 funding from FEMA, which allowed for school consolidation to be part of the rebuild, but also left the district responsible for any overruns.

Two projects meant to replace the three schools have since been slowed by numerous disruptions and disagreements, including a West Virginia Supreme Court case between the county school system and state board of education in 2018.

Meanwhile, displaced students are still attending class in portable classrooms and a previously vacated elementary school.

The already underway $42.5 million Cherry River renovation project, the plan’s first phase, will convert the 40-year-old Cherry River Elementary in Richwood into a PreK-12 school, replacing Richwood Middle and High.

The second phase would build a new school in Summersville to replace Summersville Middle while consolidating students from Nicholas County High and Nicholas County Career & Technical Center. Dubbed the Glade Creek Business Park Project, that proposal was bid out this month and returned a lone $148 million bid, plus $4.6 million for utility work.

Multiple board members confirm the district has only $97 million in FEMA and state funds remaining for the second project after delays dragged the project into COVID-19 era inflation.

The resignations come at a crossroads for the district, now faced with either changing plans or finding significant new revenue for the Glade Creek project.

Board President Chip Perrine said Burge-Tetrick’s resignation was expected, while Penix’s came as a surprise.

“[Burge-Tetrick] had talked about she thought her time was up. She still had two years on her contract, but felt we were at an impasse on this construction with being short on money and thought it would be a good time to depart,” Perrine said. “We departed on good terms.”

“The surprise of the evening was when Dr. Penix resigned. That was a shock. He didn’t really tell us anything,” Perrine said. “He said he’d enjoyed his time serving Nicholas County, but he was resigning.”

Perrine said the board agreed with Burge-Tetrick to a six-month buyout that included vacation pay, an agreement the board approved 5-0, but declined to put a dollar figure on the agreement.

Burge-Tetrick will work through June 30. A special meeting has been arranged for next Tuesday to hire a new superintendent ahead of the June 1 deadline to offer a multi-year contract.

Perrine said his prerogative was to appoint a replacement for Penix from his Birch district within the next 45 days allotted to boards, but any appointment would be subject to board approval.

Neither Penix nor Burge-Tetrick responded to messages seeking comment ahead of press time.

Perrine said the board would meet with the West Virginia School Building Authority on June 2 to discuss options for acquiring additional funds to move forward with the project.

“That’s what we’ll be working on,” Perrine said.

But both the resignations and the over-budget bid are just the latest hurdles in a long process that has seen timelines extended numerous times, plans change and costs balloon significantly.

In 2017, the West Virginia Board of Education rejected then-Nicholas County school board members’ original construction plan to house five schools at the Summersville site.

Residents of Richwood opposed losing their community schools.

After the county board sued the state board, the issue reached the West Virginia Supreme Court. Its ruling sided with the state board in affirming the county had not pursued alternative plans adequately.

Subsequent mediation split then county board members’ original single-site vision into the current two-site plan that also includes the renovated Cherry River school at Richwood, although the Summersville project remained more than four times more ambitious in cost.

Not long after, another lawsuit emerged, this time regarding the transparency of the School Building Authority’s funding approval process, but that suit was later dropped.

Following the pandemic delaying the project once more, in March 2022, the county board received and ultimately rejected unexpectedly high bids for the Cherry River project.

Board members then opted to downsize both it and Glade Creek after feeling the effect of years of COVID-19 induced inflation and supply chain stressors that county school and construction officials said threw the project off course and budget.

“I truly believe that if they would have built it before the pandemic we would have been OK,” Perrine said ahead of the meeting. “With the inflation rate and the pandemic, things are hard to get, electrical, plumbing and HVAC stuff is in high demand and short supply.’’

In November 2022, a bid for the Cherry River Elementary renovation was finally accepted at $42.5 million through SQP Construction Group, $12.5 million over a previous estimate.

This month, the lone bid for the downsized, but still much more ambitious Glade Creek project near Summersville, came in similarly high compared to estimates established years prior.

“I don’t think it can be built,” board member Roy Moose said in the weeks leading up to the meeting. “I don’t think it can be maintained.

“We’re going to revise that mediation agreement. There’s no other way. They of course say it can’t be done. I think if all parties that contributed to that are in agreement, it can be done. There have been changes to the mediation agreement all along.”

Moose is in favor of removing the $43 million technical school from the plan and leaving the current school in Craigsville, relatively equidistant from Richwood and Summersville, intact.

Despite no construction package being approved as of yet, fund-depleting costs at Glade Creek have so far included $3 million to purchase the site, $15 million for on site preparation and $10 million in payments to managing firm ZMM as construction plans changed for both schools.

Renovation at Cherry River is ongoing.

State Superintendent David Roach told the Gazette-Mail last year that changing the project significantly could jeopardize FEMA funding, while a FEMA representative indicated the scope of the work could change as long as the purpose didn’t and that changes would be evaluated on a “case-by-case basis.”

Any changes would have to be approved by both West Virginia Emergency Management Division and FEMA.