The Wetzel County Board of Education approved Superintendent Diane Watt’s recommendations Monday night regarding the termination and reassignments of several county school employees. The following were professional personnel employees who were terminated from full time status: Aaron M. Allen, Amy J. Cisar, Brittany D. Jackson, Kimberly D. Starkey, Carla N. Wade, Chris M. Wilson, and Beverly A. Zwolensky.

Service personnel employees who were terminated included April D. Ring, Nathan K. West, and Jeanette R. Whiteman.

Professional personnel employees who went from full-time to half-time status are Christopher J. Amedro and Eric C. Mason.

Half-time professional personnel employees who were terminated include Jeffrey M. Hiestand, Elizabeth K. Kaczor, and Johnny r. Schupbach. Tonya R. Hostutler was terminated from her half-time service personnel position.

At their Jan. 22 board meeting, Treasurer Jeff Lancaster explained that legislature’s school aid funding formula is based on each county’s student population. Wetzel County has consistently lost students in the past 30 years, more specifically enrollment has declined by 37 students since last year.

Wetzel County is ninth highest over the funding formula in service personnel and sixth highest over the funding formula in professional personnel. Specifically, Lancaster explained, Wetzel County is 16 professional personnel positions over and 21 service personnel positions over. In dollar amounts, Wetzel County is $1.6 million over the funding formula. If Wetzel County would choose to fund all of these positions, that would total $1.6 million the board would have to cut somewhere else; otherwise they would not have a balanced budget.

Often several of the personnel affected by the cuts are added back to the board’s personnel through attrition and retirements.