Elkins residents say there’s much to love about Randolph County’s county seat. But schools and young people need more help

ELKINS – Residents of Elkins say there’s a lot to love about their mid-size West Virginia city – the arts and culture, the natural beauty, the community pride.

They’re excited about fresh faces and new businesses in town. But in the long term, residents said they need better-funded schools and more affordable housing to keep those people and businesses around.

Mountain State Spotlight held a community listening session at the Phil Gainer Community Center in Randolph County’s county seat as part of this year’s election coverage. Reporters are visiting every county in the state to ask residents what they’d like to see their candidates and elected officials focus on this election season.

Revitalizing downtown Elkins

Residents said that a few years ago, downtown was full of empty storefronts.

Margaret Kerr Beckwith, a genealogist and former Democratic candidate who has lived most of her life in Elkins, noticed the once-vibrant community was less friendly as well. But, officials have been working to revitalize the downtown and residents are seeing it.

“It broke my heart when I saw that decline, but I was really heartened to see it start upward again,” Beckwith said.

Residents said musicians play live at local venues nearly every night. Hiking trails are abundant. Ski resorts are nearby.

The nationally-recognized Augusta Heritage Center, known for hosting the annual Augusta Festival, also draws visitors to the region for concerts and crafting, cooking and music courses.

Beckwith said tourism is a vital part of Elkins’ economy. But people do worry about starting to experience the problems that tourism has brought to neighboring Tucker County. These include a rising cost of living and lack of affordable housing as people from out of town buy residences for second homes or Airbnbs.

“It’s possible that we may be next,” she said.

Several residents mentioned the recent restoration of the historic Tygart Hotel, which was built in 1906, as a turning point, because new businesses had an incentive to open when they realized they could locate near upscale lodging for tourists. Fifty years ago, the hotel was converted into apartments but had since fallen into disrepair.

“It seems for so long, there wasn’t anything,” said Cindy Stemple, longtime resident and chair of the Randolph County Democratic Executive Committee. “And now we have a new bookstore, and we have all kinds of little shops and things and breakfast. And I think that’s exciting.”

Keeping young people in the state

Stemple raised two daughters in Elkins but said they have told her they wouldn’t move back because of the state’s rightward shift on reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and book bans.

She wants to know from lawmakers: “How are you going to build up the tax base if the people are leaving?”

But, several residents mentioned they’ve seen people in their 30s moving back to Elkins after leaving for college and getting started in their careers elsewhere.

And Stemple said she’s encouraged to see people moving to the area through the Ascend program .

Nick Lennox, a remote worker and Tennessee native who came to Elkins through the program, said he was excited about the opportunity to come back to Appalachia. He’s been welcomed by the community and is coaching high school football.

The program provides remote workers who want to move to West Virginia with $12,000 in cash, free outdoor activities and coworking space. Elkins is one of five communities in the program.

“Getting here was easy, but finding a house here was a hard part,” Lennox said.

He negotiated with two Airbnb owners to get decent prices for long-term rentals. Frequently, he hears from other people in the Ascend program who are looking for help finding housing.

He said they have been drawn to Elkins and other towns in the Ascend program by the scenic environment and cash incentives. But, Lennox said it will take more for people to settle down after the program ends.

“If we want to have kids, why wouldn’t we go to a state with paid family medical leave?” he said. “Why wouldn’t we go to a state that has fully funded schools? Why wouldn’t we go to a state that has community college and child care?”

Lennox said he’d like to see West Virginia adopt a progressive tax code where high-income earners pay more and there is more money to invest in education and infrastructure.

In contrast, Delegate Elias Coop-Gonzalez, R-Randolph, said, in a phone interview, that personal income tax cuts the Republican-led Legislature passed will encourage more people to live in the area.

He said tax relief for businesses is also needed, and that Elkins may keep attracting residents for the reasons he moved there, including its relatively close proximity to big cities like Columbus, Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh.

Coop-Gonzalez, who was raised in Guatemala, said his family moved there when he was 13 in large part due to the location.

“And it’s a nice place to be if you just like to be out in the country,” he said.

Everyone agrees education is important — but disagrees on the solutions

Nanci Bross-Fregonara, a current substitute teacher and Democratic city councilor, argues that instead of cutting taxes, lawmakers should increase school funding.

“To me, education is key to everything,” she said. “If everybody gets a good education, and they’re able to get work, they’re able to be better citizens. It sort of evens the playing field out. To me, it’s a no-brainer to spend a lot of money on education. And in the state, there is an attitude, I feel, that’s anti-public education.”

Bross-Fregonara said it disingenuous for state officials to tout revenue surpluses as rationale for tax cuts when schools have buckets in the hallways to catch water from ceiling leaks.

She said schools need social workers to help kids who are acting out and disrupting classes. That would allow teachers to focus on the reason they went into the profession – to teach.

“It’s just a battlefield in some of these classrooms,” she said. “I have taken myself off a certain school list because of the situation. It’s too sad. I feel like I’m just yelling at kids all day.”

She also worries about teachers leaving the profession due to burnout, and she wants to see smaller classrooms.

Councilor Cody Thompson, a previous Democratic lawmaker, was a high school teacher for ten years. He is running against Coop-Gonzalez to serve in the state Legislature again this year. Coop-Gonzalez, a college student studying business administration, defeated Thompson with 60% of the vote in 2022.

Thompson said Elkins High School wouldn’t be functioning right now without the help of retired teachers working as long-term substitutes.

He wants to see more public school funding.

He said when he was teaching, there were times he had forty students in a class. When there was a shortage of desks for the number of students, he had to use regular chairs in the front row, leaving about three feet between chairs and the wall. Students had to climb over desks to make their way through the room.

The state’s largest county by land area, Randolph County stands out from many other counties because it has four schools that include high school students – two K-12 schools, a middle/high school and a traditional, grades nine -12 high school.

But the Randolph County Board of Education is considering closing Harman K-12 School and the Pickens K-12 School, according to The Intermountain .

Consolidation can lead to larger classes, depending on how many families choose to send their children to newly-consolidated schools and how many choose to pull them out for alternate education options like private school, homeschooling, charter schools or microschools.

Coop-Gonzales is a supporter of school choice, meaning giving money formerly allotted to public schools to families for private education. He said he’s been gathering information about the possibility of using the Harman building for a charter school.

In West Virginia, recipients of the Hope Scholarship are eligible for nearly $5,000 per student per school year to use for alternate education options. That number is determined based on how much a public school would have received from the state for educating that student.

Supporters of the program say the money is still used for student education. Critics have argued that it reduces the amount of money schools can use for costs like building maintenance, non-teaching staff and extracurricular activities.

Coop-Gonzales said parents who want their children to benefit from those programs pay taxes too, and they deserve options.

“If they want to make the choice to send them to a public school, because it’s run in a good way, and they think it’ll be the most beneficial for the kids, then they still have that option,” he said. “If they want to homeschool, if they want to pursue charter school or a microschool, then they now have that option.”

In addition to good schools to keep people there, residents in Elkins also said there’s a need for more jobs. If young people don’t see opportunities, they’ll leave.

“We need to let them be able to stay here,” Barb Hanna said. “We need to make it worth their while to stay here.”

Debbie Strader, secretary of the county’s Democratic Executive Committee, lived in Raleigh, NC for 23 years before moving back to Elkins. There, she found a group of around 6,000 West Virginians who organized clubs to get together with other expats for games and socializing.

“The reason they left was because they couldn’t find jobs here,” she said.

She’s kept in touch with those people and said over 2,000 have moved back to the state — after they retired.

Elkins residents say there’s much to love about Randolph County’s county seat. But schools and young people need more help appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.