NEW MARTINSVILLE – If all goes well, Wetzel County High School students could walk into a new high school in the county by 2029, according to Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Cassie Porter.

Porter was the guest speaker Wednesday afternoon at the New Martinsville Rotary. She was there to discuss the process of consolidating Wetzel County’s four high schools into two and then into one.

The West Virginia Board of Education has approved Wetzel County merging Magnolia and Paden City high schools at Magnolia and merging Hundred and Valley high schools at Valley. That will happen for the 2025-26 school year. Then, the plans are to build one new high school for all the county’s students.

Porter said Thrasher Engineering will be at the Wetzel County Board of Education’s Feb. 11 meeting to present concept plans for two possible locations of the new school. When asked whether the county will build one high school or two, Porter said that a new school with new athletic facilities would cost an estimated $100 million.

Last year, the Wetzel school board put aside $29 million to help pay for a new school. The plan, Porter said, is to ultimately build the new school with available funds.

As for next year, the plan is for the two combined schools to have new names, school colors and mascots. Porter said that, before she became Wetzel schools superintendent, the board had put together a research group to learn what were Wetzel residents’ priorities. Among them, she said, were improved education with certified teachers and increased security to prevent any problems in the future.

Porter said that, with these consolidations, students would have more certified teachers in more classrooms, rather than learning from long-term substitutes and via remote classes.