KANAWHA COUNTY, WV (WOWK) — The Kanawha County Board of Education voted 5-0 to close McKinley Middle School.

The closure will happen at the end of the 2024-25 school year. Middle schoolers will start going to Hayes Middle in the Fall of 2025.

The meeting was held at St. Albans High School on Wednesday, one day after the board voted 3-2 to close East Bank Middle School and have students attend DuPont.

Superintendent Dr. Tom Williams said that a declining enrollment is to blame for the closure.

“Unfortunately, over the last 10 years, we’ve lost approximately 5,000 students, and our schools are funded on the number of students we have. As much as I would like to keep our schools smaller, and everyone likes their neighborhood school, we’re just not able to financially do that,” Dr. Williams said.

Parents, while understanding, said the drop in enrollment and consolidation is disappointing.

“I went here, now my son’s going here. It does have a little sentimental value,” Joshua Johnson, a father of a McKinley student, said. “I just think it will make things a little more difficult, especially where he lives on this side of town.”

There are four more consolidation hearings happening in the coming weeks, all at Riverside High School. These will be on closing Belle, Mary Ingles, Malden and Midland Trail Elementary Schools, and building a new school.

Dr. Williams said in September that the option of consolidating the four elementary schools would allow him to apply for SBA funding to build a new, larger building for the larger number of students in the old DuPont Jr. High field, which the district owns.

Each school gets its own public hearing. Here is when those will be:

Back in 2023, three elementary schools were closed and consolidated: Grandview, Marmet and Weimer. All three were closed at the end of the 2023-2024 school year .

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These students were transferred to different schools. Grandview students went to Mary C. Snow and Edgewood, Weimer was split between Alban and Bridgeview Elementary, and Marmet transferred three miles away to Chesapeake.

According to a report written in May 2023, the district lost around 4,400 students in the last 10 years, which is a decrease of 15%.

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