West Virginia Board of Education OKs Community Schools Plan for McDowell County Public Schools

The West Virginia Board of Education unanimously approved a community schools plan for the McDowell County Public Schools, marking one of Reconnecting McDowell's most significant efforts thus far to improve the education, health and well-being of the county's students and their families. Read the press release.

Check out the new McDowell website at West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

West Virginia Public Radio launches an on-going and in-depth focus on revitalization efforts in McDowell County.

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Read the latest edition of our Reconnecting McDowell newsletter, a regular update for the McDowell community, partners and those interested in staying informed on what is happening.

Reconnecting McDowell is a comprehensive, long-term effort to make educational improvement in McDowell County the route to a brighter economic future. Partners from business, foundations, government, nonprofit agencies and labor have committed, in a signed covenant, to seeking solutions to McDowell’s complex problems—poverty, underperforming schools, drug and alcohol abuse, housing shortages, limited medical services, and inadequate access to technology and transportation.

None of this will be easy or quick; the problems in McDowell County have been decades in the making. But by working together with the amazing people who live there, and by assembling, coordinating and sustaining the educational, social and economic supports they need, we are confident that this resilient community will be on a path to reconnecting its hopes for the future.

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