By Ryan Quinn, Charleston gazette-Mail
PARKERSBURG — West Virginia Department of Education officials, a state Board of Education member and the schools superintendents of counties including Monongalia and Cabell met behind closed doors Wednesday.
Charter schools were the discussion topic, several attendees said.
Jim Wilson, the attending state school board member, said it was “just a preliminary discussion of setting up a policy for charter schools — what people need to know, what they want to know.”
Deputy state Schools Superintendent Clayton Burch, the education department’s No. 2 official, said the Gazette-Mail wasn’t allowed into the meeting at Parkersburg’s Blennerhassett Hotel.
“It’s not a public meeting,” Burch said.
When asked how many county superintendents would be there, he said, “doesn’t matter, it’s our meeting, bud, it’s not an open thing.”
Burch and county schools superintendents’ annual salaries all exceed $100,000 each, so the combined, publicly funded yearly salaries of the attendees easily exceeded half a million dollars.