By Nick Fouriezos for Open Campus via The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for West Virginia News Service Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

A black-and-white film plays beside Mountaineer sports pennants at "The New Place," the area's last remaining bar, now two decades old. It's 8 p.m. on a weekday, and it's just me and two other souls.

"I love West Virginia University," one says, "but they wrecked the city of Montgomery."

In 2017, WVU relocated West Virginia Tech from its home of 120 years, citing low enrollment - around half its peak of about 3,000 students - and high costs while moving from Montgomery to Beckley, a bigger city an hour up the valley.

The decision risks making the former college town of Montgomery into a ghost town. More than five years later, it still inspires emotional reactions from residents, even in a state and region well familiar with resource extraction.

Life without the local college is a reality that more rural areas are having to contend with (even if the closure of a public university is still exceedingly rare). Since 2016, more than 90 public or private nonprofit colleges have closed or been marked for closure, according to Higher Ed Dive's tracker.

"In West Virginia, we're robbing from the poor towns and putting wealth into richer towns," Montgomery Mayor Greg Ingram says.

In the Appalachian state, it's clear that the state's flagship university isn't the sole culprit for the challenges facing Montgomery and the surrounding region.

On the surface, the valley has all the trappings of a prime tourist destination: a sparkling river, a gorgeous waterfall, and hills of houses that paint the white West Virginia snow in pastel pinks, blues, yellows. However, the drive down Highway 60 is a drive that deceives.

That sparkling river? It's the Kanawha River, the toxic recipient of two centuries of coal mining (and, in 2015, a train's worth of spilled crude oil that literally set it on fire). And those pastel houses? Many sit empty, ravaged by the same factors (drugs, poverty, aging) that contribute to West Virginia being one of the nation's leading states for population loss.

Montgomery and its neighbors will have to grapple with those obstacles as they try to transition to rebuild its economy around tourism, although "that's nowhere near the same size as what our college was," Ingram, the mayor, reflects.

West Virginia Tech, and its once top-10 engineer program, had been one of the area's proudest assets - the rare case that imported new people and ideas, rather than exporting them out for others to enjoy.

But then WVU bought the campus in 1995. Ever since, residents here feel, the flagship university has worked to move it out, before finally getting approval to do so in 2015.

"WVU swings a big political club in West Virginia," Ingram says, singling out Gordon Gee, its president, who has also been known for aggressive expansion at other flagships, including Ohio State University and the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Rural communities and their universities are facing special difficulties as pandemic aid dwindles, and enrollment remains down. It's feeding distrust of larger state universities, many of which have grown larger by acquiring rural outposts that end up being the first cut once leaner times hit.

"They just wanted it out of here: It's all political," Ingram says, lamenting the loss of the Kroger, the car dealership, more than 100 well-paid university professionals, and, of course, the students who rented hundreds of rooms throughout the region.

"People should just come and look at the desolation they left. It would be a good education for the whole country, really: Don't move a college."

I went to Montgomery, and saw the aftermath of WVU's decision, which I will explore in more depth in a future issue. In this newsletter though, I want to reflect on the frustrations rural communities feel toward state flagships - "the big university," as many say, and not just in West Virginia, but across these divided states of America.

"This was the lifeblood of this town: It's what the area is known for," Ingram says. "Morgantown is known for WVU - well, pull WVU out of there, and see what Morgantown is left with."

'A Tyranny of Distance'

The frustrations bubbling up in West Virginia are playing out across the country.

Lori Gilcrist, an education advocate in western North Carolina, has no problem with university students coming to rural areas and giving their time and effort.

However, she sees some university efforts to recruit rural students as uninformed by local realities - and programs that promise to "help," such as efforts to boost FAFSA completion, are often gone as quick as the grant cycle.

Often, researchers come in but aren't there to fix problems at the local level. Instead, they want to get enough of a rural sample size to suggest a national or statewide fix that doesn't account for variations in rurality.

As a result, many rural residents feel like big universities like UNC-Chapel Hill only nod to their needs while offering overly prescriptive solutions - an approach that creates and exacerbates long-simmering tensions.

That's particularly evident in North Carolina, where gaps exist between the state's rural areas and its Research Triangle, home to Chapel Hill and Duke University, among others.

The attitude is "I'm from Raleigh, and I'm here to help you," as Misti Silver, a program chair at local Mayland Community College, put it. As far as asking what they needed? The concept makes both Silver and Gilcrist chuckle. "Oh, absolutely not." "Lord no!"

Gilcrist is a white woman who was born in Mississippi, grew up in Alabama, and has lived in Appalachian North Carolina the last two decades.

Yet when she finds herself attending UNC rural-focused events in the Research Triangle, she often finds herself sitting in the back with rural Black folks from the eastern part of North Carolina. "There's no other people from the west there and I have more in common with those women," Gilcrist says.

During one such event at UNC-Chapel Hill, a rural resident noted that the less rural central and southern parts of the state already had access to NC Rural services, while the rural east and rural west did not.

When folks asked why, a staffer said those areas didn't have the money to pay for those UNC-affiliated programs in the unserved parts of the state, as Gilcrist says: "The problem is, we don't have the money to afford this because the funding streams systematically underfund rural programs like ours."

That feeling is also acute in Wyoming, where the flagship university in Laramie can be as much as an eight-hour drive from some rural communities.

"We face a tyranny of distance: I have never been in a rural environment that is so disconnected," says Scott Thomas, dean of the College of Education, as he takes a Zoom meeting with me from his parked car.

Thomas is well aware that such distances can foster distrust, especially if a flagship swoops in purporting to have all the answers. "There is a great deal of suspicion of higher education learning: We're like the Berkeley of Wyoming," he says.

That's why Thomas, a sociologist at heart, has focused on a new model for rural personalization while crafting an asynchronous, mostly online Master Educator Competency Program to start addressing some of the state's overall teacher retention challenges.

"We don't say 'This is your curriculum.' We say, "What do you need in your place?" he says, a process that led the university to realize that educators were less interested in hot-button issues, like civic education, and more curious about how to really create more student-centered environments at their schools.

The competency program, currently being piloted in seven districts, will also allow communities to shape a portion of the curriculum to fit their specific circumstances and needs. "We're listening a lot more, and making it accessible to everyone in the state, rather than expecting them to traverse to some site distant from where they are."

In the end, he hopes that level of community outreach, engagement, and ongoing input will become a model for professional development that can be adopted elsewhere.

"It's bringing the University of Wyoming to Wyoming. And that's different from, 'Hi, we're here from the university, and we're here to help.'"

An elementary school educator from Pennsylvania has been named this year's Education Support Professional of the Year, one of the highest honors in the field.

Becky Marszalek, a paraprofessional at Avonworth Elementary School in Pittsburgh, received the Pennsylvania State Education Association's Dolores McCracken Education Support Award. For 18 years, Marszalek said she has dedicated herself to assisting teachers and students in the classroom, providing the support needed for everyone to succeed.

"I've worked with kids that have been in a wheelchair. I have kids that have had autism," Marszalek pointed out. "It's a matter of if they need help with their work, whether they need help maneuvering through the school sometimes, sometimes just a comfort person to go to and be, like, 'I need a break. I'm having a tough time.'"

Marszalek recently attended the association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, where she addressed more than 500 members and was presented with the state award. The achievement now qualifies her to compete at the national level. In March, she will join other state winners in Louisville, Kentucky, vying for the National Education Support Professional of the Year award.

Chris Lilienthal, assistant director of communications for the association, said it has given the award for more than 20 years and it was recently renamed in honor of McCracken, the first association member who was an education support professional.

"She was herself a paraprofessional in Bucks County and she rose in the ranks to become the first president of PSEA," Lilienthal explained. "When she passed away, unfortunately, in 2018 we renamed the award in her honor, to recognize and remember her amazing work."

With the teacher shortage in Pennsylvania and across the country, Marszalek emphasized being an education support professional is an important field and encourages others to consider a career in education. As she said, "It's all about the kids."

"It's a tough job," Marszalek acknowledged. "But my thing is, you want to be there for the kids and to help the kids and just see them thrive, see them learn, and be willing to help them and have that in your heart to be able to do that."

Marszalek recalled many rewarding experiences, but two stood out. One was a nonverbal kindergartner who began speaking after years of working with the child and melted her heart by calling her "Miss M." Another was a second-grader with behavioral challenges whom she mentored, building a strong rapport, which led to significant improvement and a request to continue mentoring him in fourth grade.

Members of the teacher's union, the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers, are celebrating the signing of the Social Security Fairness Act.

President Joe Biden recently signed the legislation into law. It boosts retirement benefits for some school district employees and other public servants nationwide.

Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT, said Texas is one of 15 states that denied public servants Social Security benefits, because of money paid into pension plans.

"We had people actually leave education and go back into other industries when they found out this was the case," said Capo, "so that they made sure that they didn't incur these penalties. So, we were actually losing good, qualified people."

He added that teaching is a second career for about 40% of teachers in the state, and they shouldn't be penalized for changing careers.

Capo said he believes the legislation will help school districts recruit more teachers and assist in easing the teacher shortage.

"They're bringing their experience from the workforce," said Capo, "they're bringing their experience from other places - whether they were scientists in different industries or worked in the healthcare system, and are now coming in to teach math and science and workforce classes in our public schools."

He said educators aren't the only ones benefiting from the change.

"They may have made $20,000 or $30,000 their entire career," said Capo. "Cooking lunches, cleaning our classrooms, driving our buses, and they're going to get on average about a $360-a-month increase -- which, for many of them, is the difference between buying groceries and buying medication."

Connecticut educators and other public sector workers are celebrating passage of the Social Security Fairness Act.

The new federal law repealed two provisions which had reduced Social Security benefits for some public sector workers who also receive a pension and who will now be eligible for benefits they would have earned in 2024.

Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, said passing this law rights a 40-year-old wrong.

"The government chose, erroneously, to penalize public service employees to try and balance Social Security, and it was never a just cause," Dias asserted. "It's great to see this overturned; money returned to people who have rightfully earned it."

Supporters of the change said the biggest challenge to passing the law was many people were unaware of these limits for public employees. Some critics charged it could speed up the timelinefor Social Security's insolvency.

Dias feels there's more work to do, including higher teacher salaries to reflect the education required to do the work. Reports show most Connecticut salaries do not keep up with the cost of living.

Feedback on the law has been overwhelmingly positive. Dias noted the money being reimbursed to public sector workers will enable some to retire who otherwise could not, without losing certain benefits.

"We have teachers that are in their 70s that haven't been able to retire," Dias observed. "This is going to enable them to do that. We've gotten the stories from people who called us and said, 'I've been living moment to moment, paycheck to paycheck, and been collecting food stamps, and now I'm not going to have to do that. I'm not going to be a burden to my family.'"

The new law may also help Connecticut recruit second-career teachers, people with previous careers as accountants, engineers and in other in-demand fields. Since the state is in the third year of a teacher shortage, Dias added it could help close widening gaps.

"In terms of retention, those second-career educators we have brought into the profession often have to leave before they are vested in the pension so they don't get penalized," Dias pointed out. "That's a problem as well, because they're only with our profession for a short period of time, as opposed to being able to have a long career."