photo by: Stephanie Elverd

Marshall County Schools Superintendent Shelby Haines presents a draft of the 2026-27 school calendar during Tuesday’s board of education meeting.

With the valley still digging out from Sunday’s snow storm and plunging temperatures expected to continue, Marshall County Schools Superintendent Shelby Haines said student safety remains the district’s priority.

When classes will resume remains up in the air.

“We hope to get back to school as soon as possible, but we can’t do that and risk our kids and our employees and our buses,” Haines told the BOE during its regular meeting on Tuesday. “We have nothing but great things to say about the Department of Highways, but we have a lot of land mass and there are a lot of back roads.”

The board used the majority of Tuesday’s meeting to discuss the district’s 2026-27 strategic plan — a blueprint to ensure no child is left behind and all academic needs are met.

According to the West Virginia Department of Education, strategic plans in West Virginia schools are guided by WVBE Policy 2322 and “focus on continuous improvement through collaborative, data-driven goals to boost student performance.”

Key components include rigorous academic instruction, 97-99% student engagement, enhanced behavior/mental health supports and workforce readiness pathways and includes family, community involvement and student success regarding their academic, social and emotional well-being.

“This is the data we look at and share and start to make goals at the schools but those goals at the schools shape the goals here at the county,” Haines said.

Haines said the district began holding work nights at John Marshall last year “where the principals could bring their strategic planning teams” and share their data as well as learn about the different resources and additional data available in the district.

The data includes student proficiency in language arts and math back to 2021, high school graduation and student success presented in different subgroups such as students with disabilities, homeless students and mulit-race students. Haines said the district “then starts to compare why one subgroup may be lower than the other.”

The data also looks at post-secondary achievement, behavioral and chronic absenteeism, the latter of which the district hopes to correct.

“If students are not in school for whatever the reason or excuse, no matter how good the instruction is, they are not benefiting from it if they are not there,” said BOE president John Miller. “So whatever we can do to get them there and keep them there, the chances of their success grows.”

The board also discussed the 2026-27 school calendar and public feedback regarding it. Haines said people expressed the want for longer holiday breaks — particularly Thanksgiving — but said the required school days make pleasing everyone an impossible task.

Haines said she added all the public comments to the draft schedule presented on Tuesday and will add more comments as she receives them.

The Marshall County BOE meets the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at the board offices in Moundsville. The next meeting is set for Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m.