The Rural School and Community Trust, 2002
Few states have pursued consolidation of rural schools more aggressively than West Virginia. With the promise of broader curriculum and huge tax savings, the state has closed more than 300 schools, one in every five, since 1990. In 2002, the Charleston Gazette investigated the outcomes of the state's consolidation efforts in the series, "Closing Costs." Its authors, reporters Eric Eyre and Scott Finn, won the 2002 Education Writers Award for best series for a newspaper with circulation under 100,000 and the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Education Reporting.
