Christina Weiland, a professor at the University of Michigan, created a public online tracker of school closures in West Virginia. (Courtesy of the University of Michigan)
A team at the University of Michigan created it an online tool to track school closures and consolidations in West Virginia as the state struggles with population decline and widespread school financial problems.
The project was led by Roane County Born Christina Weiland, she is currently a professor of education and social policy at the University of Michigan.
Since 2011, 139 public schools have closed in West Virginia, and 62% of counties have closed at least one school. Many of the closures affected elementary schools Weiland noted that this created long bus rides for youthful children across the state.
She developed the tracker with the assist of her students after struggling to keep up with the number of school closures and where they were occurring.
The public data was “not presented in a way that people could see what was going on in their county, what was happening over time, where the attacks were occurring and what those patterns were,” Weiland explained.
The online dataset allows individuals to search student population and school closures by county. It also examines enrollment trends across West Virginia counties from 2011-2026.
“These are big changes in small places…You’ll see that in some cases county school enrollment is declining faster than the population, and I think that’s a trend that we need to understand better to understand why that is,” Weiland said.
The Together for Public Schools WV Coalition, comprised of families, educators and community members, recently called for an immediate pause about school closures in West Virginia as lawmakers consider tackling the state’s archaic school funding formula.
West Virginia uses a seven-step formula to determine how much state funding goes to the county’s school systems based on factors such as the number of students enrolled.
According to the West Virginia Department of Education, public schools have 2,685.92 school staff positions above the formula, and the state has experienced another year widespread cuts to teachers and staff. Counties will employ local resources where available to avoid job losses.
Along with the population decline, school finances were also affected growing number of high-priced special education teachers and children leaving the public school system to take advantage of the state’s education voucher program, the Hope Scholarship.
Dwindling pandemic-era federal funding that has shored up school budgets in recent years has exacerbated schools’ financial problems.
As lawmakers began the 2026 legislative session with plans to revise the formulathe session ended in March without any of these measures It will be forwarded to the governor’s desk for consideration.
Republican education leaders in the House and Senate have said overhauling the funding formula, including increasing funding for special education students, will be a focus for the 2027 legislative session.
Weiland noted that her project does not aim to offer solutions to the school closures, but rather focuses on presenting the data.
“I think it’s just a way – as people try to find a way forward – to make sure that they have the data easily in their hand to get a handle on it. I think that’s the service we’re trying to provide here,” she said.
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