Facing school safety concerns and domestic violence, Wetzel and Tyler county residents want to know lawmakers’ plans to protect them

HUNDRED – During a back-to-school event in front of Hundred High School, in an isolated part of Wetzel County, teachers sat at booths to introduce themselves to parents who stopped by and wanted to talk about the new school year. Teenagers, too, sat outside with their parents and teachers, face-painting, catching up on their summers and talking about heading back to school.

Like many other young people interviewed in the region as schools have opened, most often they brought up feeling unsafe at school.

A senior, Emily Prendergast said she worries about bullying and shootings, including mass shootings, at high schools. School resource officers stationed at schools make her feel better, but she added that some schools don’t have them .

A survivor of child abuse, she believes school staff members want to help keep her safe. She noted they have active shooter drills.

And at the small school, educators, especially Mrs. Hayes, helped her with her mental health when she told the teacher about the abuse.

“She was definitely like a mom to me,” she said.

Prendergast said she’s nervous that people entering the school may be carrying guns.

And at the college level, state lawmakers passed legislation last year allowing students to carry concealed guns on campus.

“Maybe I don’t want to go to school in West Virginia now,” Prendergast said.

Both she and her friend Elizabeth Robb said they can sympathize with those who carry guns. Those students want to feel safe too.

But to Robb, it’s also scary to think about college students carrying guns while they are experiencing mental health crises or under the influence – “not under the right state of mind,” she said, because they could hurt or kill themselves or others.

A couple of years ago, while she was 16 and living in Texas, a gunman killed 19 kids and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde. Amid a nationwide, growing youth mental health emergency , she said she would even feel some self-blame if something like that happened.

“I’ve grown up reading and [learning] from my mom to notice the signs that someone’s not okay,” she said. “But then again, everyone puts on a brave face.”

In interviews around Ritchie, Wetzel and Tyler counties, students frequently said they’re worried about school and campus safety.

Others interviewed in the region often brought up violence and threats, including bullying and family violence like domestic and child abuse.

Mountain State Spotlight visited these areas as part of a project to visit 55 counties as the November election approaches and ask, “What do you want to hear candidates talking about as they compete for your vote?”

Like many parts of the state, the region is mostly represented by Republicans who will be unopposed on the ballot this fall. Here’s how they said they’d respond to the concerns of residents:

Students want to feel safe at school

About a 45-minute drive west of the school in Hundred, toward New Martinsville, other young people gathered at the Wetzel County 4-H grounds. The annual Town and Country Days fair featured food, vendors and ATV races.

Brenna Clark, 17, said she has been bullied. A senior at Paden City High School, she said that other students have had to transfer to her school because of it.

“I stick out like a sore thumb because I show up on the first day of school, and I’m reading a book going down the hallway,” she said.

She said bullying doesn’t stop even when students are reprimanded and that more school-based mental health care could help victims.

She was with her coworker, Kayla Southerly, who has two nephews who died by suicide following bullying in the last several years. She said they were Tyler Consolidated students.

She said it was tough to talk about, but she wished the school had done more.

“They just refused to talk about it,” she said.

Tyler County schools have regularly participated in research-based suicide prevention programming, according to Michelle Toman, who works with the schools and is the founder of the Brother Up suicide prevention and suicide loss survivor support foundation.

She said they conducted “post-ventions,” as well, meaning school programs following the suicides. Toman said losing someone you know personally to suicide can be one risk factor. So post-ventions include education on warning signs, how to find help and the importance of telling trusted adults.

Toman, who conducts prevention programming throughout the state, said that Tyler schools have been receptive to help.

But she has noticed that in isolated areas like this region, where everyone knows everyone, and mental health care providers are few and far between, risk increases. Because everyone is connected, when someone dies by suicide, they’re more likely to know that person.

“We have to truly fight back harder in those areas,” she said.

So she and Prevent Suicide WV are working with the school system this year to help kids establish their own peer-led mental health programming, in which they’ll will learn about how to cope with distress and take care of their mental health.

Those programs could help those doing the bullying as well, she added.

Toman said students who are threatened with violence by their peers do face more emotional distress.

But Toman, who conducts prevention programming throughout the state, added that contributing risk factors affect each person differently and build upon each other, and that suicide has no singular cause.

“There are things you can do to help yourself,” she said. “And if you’re not taught that at home, then you need to be taught that at school.”

Clark and Southerly said they wished schools had done more earlier to protect kids’ mental health.

Mental health and domestic violence resources:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – Call. Text. Chat.
• Brother Up
• Prevent Suicide WV
• Children’s Crisis and Referral Line (844-HELP4WV)
• West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Prevent Child Abuse WV

Clark said some are afraid to talk about suicide because it’s “taboo,” but it shouldn’t be.

Research suggests that while some people believe talking about suicidal thoughts increases risk, open discussion about it can make it more likely that people struggling will find help.

They surmised that when kids have tough home environments – maybe they’re neglected, they experience a lot of fear that they take out on schoolmates.

“Some kids just don’t understand where the line is between trying to protect yourself and where you’re just flat out bullying someone else,” Clark said.

“You’ve got bullies raising bullies,” Southerly added.

Children who experience trauma like abuse, neglect, poverty or domestic violence in the home are at elevated risk of developing chronic stress and perpetrating violence in adulthood.

Along the main street in Sistersville, another Ohio River town, Gaige Evans, 21, is the only one at the library on a recent afternoon.

He went to Tyler Consolidated and lives in Sistersville. He’s been visiting the library for years, to check out books, or as a kid, to snuggle with stuffed animals. His cat has turned into the “library cat.”

As someone who’s also been bullied, the library has served as a place where he feels safe.

But Evans wants to see school administrators improve attempts to prevent bullying in the first place.

“Any school should be a safe place for a kid to be, to learn and feel safe,” he said.

At a New Martinsville ice cream shop, Autumn Shepherd, who is from Pennsboro in Ritchie County, said she was home on break from Marshall University, visiting with friends.

She’s noticed that politicians themselves can be the ones perpetuating fear among their constituents.

After taking a media literacy class, Shepherd observed that reels on Instagram on current events are often inaccurate and extremist.

And rather than ask a politician a question, she’d like to see them ask themself a question before they speak: “Is it true, is it kind, or is it necessary?”

Victims of violence need more than immediate help

At the Refuge Church in New Martinsville, people of all ages, families, older people and younger people, form a line into the church for food from the food pantry and kids clothes for back-to-school.

Volunteers said the area lacks a local domestic violence shelter.

Dianna Mikes, director of the clothing closet, and Mary Haynes, assistant director, said they frequently see single mothers who are survivors of domestic violence.

Often, their boyfriends or husbands are in jail for drug-related crimes, so the families lose  income and struggle to find affordable housing.

Volunteers also serve grandparents in need of school clothes for child victims newly in their care.

“It’s nothing for somebody to be pushing 80 years old to come in and say, ‘I just got custody of kids last night. I need clothes,’” Haynes said.

Outside of Refuge Church, Cheyenne McMillan said K-pop was a source of encouragement for her while she was in an abusive relationship. Particularly the song “Love Yourself” by the South Korean band BTS.

“It’s talking about how you need to love yourself and put yourself first sometimes,” she said. “And I was like, ‘oh, okay, so this is new. I like this feeling.’ I left four months later.”

Now as a single, working mother, she’s gone from one difficult situation to another.

She makes $10 an hour and lives in a low-income housing complex where her biracial son is bullied.

Back-to-school clothes this year were more expensive, but the weekly event at the church helps make ends meet. Still, she feels judged for being a single mother who needs the help.

“You see a single father, you start cheering him on and being like, ‘yeah, he’s doing what he needs to,’” she said. “And you see a single mom, and then you’re like, ‘OK, well, what did she do wrong to mess up her own family?’”

Correction 9/4/24: An earlier version of this article misspelled Cheyenne McMillan’s last name.

Facing school safety concerns and domestic violence, Wetzel and Tyler county residents want to know lawmakers’ plans to protect them appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.