WHEELING — The National Blue Ribbon School program was discontinued earlier this year, but Steenrod Elementary School in Ohio County nevertheless has been selected as a West Virginia Blue Ribbon School for 2025.

School officials will travel to Charleston on Nov. 12 to be recognized during the regular meeting of the West Virginia Board of Education.

A school from Wood County Schools, also will be recognized, according to Michelle Dietrich, principal at Steenrod Elementary.

She explained Steenrod had been on track for national Blue Ribbon recognition, but that program is not happening in 2025 and has been cancelled by the Trump Administration.

The announcement of the program’s end came in September after Dietrich and her staff had already filed the paperwork for Blue Ribbon recognition.

“Back in February we were contacted to apply to be a Blue Ribbon school,” she explained. “We formed a team at the school to work on the questions. It was a pretty lengthy essay process, and there were five different sections.”

The team worked on the questions throughout March and April, then submitted the application.

Next came the review process.

“Initially, it was a National Blue Ribbon School program,” she continued.

“In September, schools got the world it was no longer going to be run through the U.S. Department of Education. It was up to each state to determine how they would recognize their Blue Ribbon schools.

“So we are now a West Virginia Blue Ribbon School. But we were on track for the national recognition. It’s just because they canceled it that it didn’t happen.”

The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program in the past has honored public and private K-12 schools that are either academically superior in their state or that demonstrate dramatic gains in student achievement. States recommended to the federal government schools

“We’ve moved up. We’ve improved our scores,” Dietrich said. “That’s the primary thing they look at.”

Community support and parental involvement at the school also were assessed, she added.

Steenrod Elementary previously won the award in 2003. Schools were eligible for the honor again five years after first being recognized, according to Dietrich.