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Parents tell Harrison County board ADA requests were ignored, allege wrongful unenrollment
Summary
Three parents told the Harrison County Board of Education that district officials failed to process ADA accommodation requests, that one student was unenrolled after the October funding count, and that the Department of Health guidance and state law assign ADA precedence for medical exemptions.
Chris Scharnhorst, a parent of four Harrison County Public Schools students, told the board he was alarmed after an Army recruiter visited junior homerooms the week before Thanksgiving and asked students to complete a questionnaire that included health information, driver’s-license or permit data and social-media handles. "He said he had put ‘prefer not to answer’ or did not answer most of the questions," Scharnhorst said, and he and other parents wanted clarification about why students were contacted directly and whether parents had been notified.
Jessica Cobb, a parent, said her 17-year-old daughter, Zoe Cobb, has been excluded from school since early September and that the district has not responded to repeated requests to initiate the ADA interactive process. "For months, we have received no response to our request for the district ADA coordinator," Cobb said. She said the family received a letter threatening unenrollment during an ongoing medical-exemption review and that her completed ADA paperwork received no acknowledgement. Cobb noted that the Department of Health and Human Services told the family and district leadership that ADA accommodation requests take precedence and cited West Virginia Code 16-3-4 on the commissioner’s authority over exemptions.
Amanda McCray said her daughter, an eighth grader, was told at a September 9 meeting with district leadership that she must be removed and unenrolled for failure to be vaccinated even though medical documentation invoking ADA protections had been supplied. McCray said the district continued to send absence notices, and the family received a certified unenrollment letter dated October 3 — two days after the district’s October 1 funding count — which she said means the county retained funding while the child was out of school. "At this point, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the district has acted out of fear, politics, or misunderstanding of its own policies, but not out of concern for the children affected," McCray said.
The board did not issue a formal response during public comment. Meeting leadership offered to meet with parents after the session: the meeting president asked parents to stay after the meeting so the superintendent (identified during the meeting as Mrs. Knight) or other district staff could discuss the concerns. No corrective action or final resolution was recorded in the transcript.
Why it matters: Parents say the district’s failure to process ADA requests and its communication breakdowns have left students out of school and raised questions about compliance with federal disability protections and the mechanics of unenrollment timed near state funding counts. The families requested that the board acknowledge the failures, restart the ADA process, and restore students to in-person education.
Next steps: The meeting record shows board leadership invited parents to meet with the superintendent after the meeting; the transcript does not record that the district accepted or completed the requested ADA accommodations or reversed any unenrollments.
