CIRCLING THE DRAIN IN APPALACHIA—AN INSIDE LOOK AT SOME TROUBLING STATISTICS

One day in the spring of 2010, my daughter came home from school and told me the guidance counselor had called her into the office and explained that cosmetology courses would serve her better than a college education. “You’ll make more money in that field,” the counselor told her. “Than you will with most college degrees.”

That was her senior year in high school. She had a high GPA and held her own in college prep and AP classes. My daughter was bewildered—and more than a little angry—that instead of trying to help her find scholarship money for college, a high school guidance counselor had tried to steer her toward a certificate program at the local Vo-Tech.

We never learned what motivated this strange bit of “guidance” that my daughter told me about while choking down tears of outrage. She’d worked hard for that GPA, and felt insulted by the counselor’s attempt to steer her off a college track. Theories existed. I wondered if it came down to funding—did the vocational school depend on a grant that was contingent on certain enrollment numbers? It’s been said that Southwest Virginia’s greatest export is its children—most graduate from high school, find work or attend college far from these hills, and never return. So, was it a ploy to entice more graduates to remain in the region, since work as a hairdresser is indeed easier to come by in most regions of Central Appalachia than any job requiring a postgraduate education?

The median dropout rate for graduating classes in our county is 8.6%. One class boasted a 2015 dropout rate of 10.0% over the four years of high school. The school my daughter attended had an 8.6% dropout rate in 2015, while the dropout rate for Virginia overall was 4.3%.* I couldn’t understand why the schools didn’t target the at-risk students for certificate programs rather than the kids on an academic path. It’s not like kids with no college plans were in short supply.

IT GETS WORSE

Perhaps my daughter and I should have considered ourselves lucky that an attempt to recruit her from college prep classes into Vo-Tech was the only real, lasting complaint she had about her years of Southwest Virginia public education. For kids in a neighboring county, the dangers were a bit more physical.

In 2014, a former janitor at Lebanon Elementary School in Russell County, Virginia, pled guilty to 150 counts of aggravated sexual battery, forcible sodomy and carnal knowledge in connection with abuses that involved four minor boys. In a $10,000,000 lawsuit filed by one of the victims, the plaintiff alleges that Russell County school employees “turned a blind eye to Gobble’s blatant sexual misconduct against John and other male students” and “created and fostered an environment in which John and other male students were vulnerable and subjected to Gobble’s deplorable sexual abuse.”** This abuse reportedly occurred in Bobby Gobble’s office, in a stockroom, and in Gobble’s home. The lawsuit includes details about teachers witnessing inappropriate and suspicious behavior of Gobble toward the plaintiff, and states that school employees knew the boy had moved into Gobble’s private residence and failed to question those living arrangements.

NOT SAFE FOR YOUNG BOYS, NOT SAFE FOR ANIMALS, NOT SAFE FOR EMPLOYEES

In 2016, a former animal control officer with the Russell County Animal Shelter filed a $353,000 lawsuit alleging that her supervisor, Odell Musick, and his son Chris Musick, touched her inappropriately and subjected her to an almost constant barrage of sexual innuendo and remarks about her body. Becki Wilson was fired from her position in December of 2015, only a few months after she reported unsatisfactory conditions at the shelter to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Becki’s tip prompted an unannounced inspection by the state that uncovered 19 instances of non-compliance and 8 critical violations.***

“Russell County” is a name you will see again. As the Director of a 501c3 animal rescue, member of Virginians for Change to Animal Legislation, and very vocal animal welfare activist, I have taken extreme issue with unresolved problems at the Russell County Animal Shelter, and I’ll be posting about that in the near future. So stay tuned. That one’s going to be dicey.

In future articles, I’ll talk about why Central Appalachia is a really dangerous place to be a dog, or a cat, or horse, or any animal at all. But for now, I’ll leave you with some final statistics—the 2015 kill rates for municipal shelters across Virginia.

The 2016 numbers are now available, and we’ll talk about them, too. Later. The 2015 numbers are still important, because they clearly track the crisis in Southwest Virginia, particularly in the “pocket of shame” that includes Tazewell County, Russell County, and Buchanan County, a geographical grouping of three of the highest kill animal shelters in Virginia for that year. How do those statistics fit into a discourse about the statistical indications that a culture is circling the drain? I believe it’s all connected, a Gordian’s Knot of social issues that very accurately reflect the overall health of a community. Nobody said it better than Gandhi:

	“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

As for my daughter? She graduated from high school in the top three percent of her class and went straight into college. But she didn’t stay here in Southwest Virginia. She’s long gone, and I don’t blame her. She said she would never want to raise her own children here, and that says a mouthful our community leaders would do well to heed.

*statistics provided by www.startclass.com , 2017, Tazewell High School and Richlands High School.

**https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/a-boy-was-sexually-abused-in-a-janitors-closet-is-the-school-responsible/2017/01/16/d913b1f6-d1e2-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.f0e890482608

*** http://www.wcyb.com/news/former-animal-control-officer-files-suit-against-russell-county-virginia/74301782