Members of the Raleigh County Board of Education will vote Tuesday night on what will make up the county's proposal this year to the state School Building Authority.

A new Marsh Fork Elementary School could be included.

Raleigh County Board of Education President Rick Snuffer talked with Massey CEO Don Blankenship on Monday after discussions Friday with other Massey officials about possible help from Massey if the Board decides to build a new school to replace Marsh Fork.

"(It was) A very pleasant conversation.  They were very open to it," Snuffer told MetroNews on Monday afternoon of those talks.

"They did not commit to any specific financial resources or anything.  They said that, as we went forward with this, they'd be willing to look at what they could do, whether it be site prep or property acquisition, if it would be a piece of property that Massey owned that we would decide to put the new school on."

Snuffer, though, says it's early in the process and the debate about the new school has gotten ahead of itself.  "There's been a lot of, probably, preemptive stuff on this."

After the Raleigh County Board's consideration of approaching Massey, which came out of a work session, was made public, U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller and Third District Congressman Nick Rahall publicly criticized Massey Energy for not providing assistance for a school that sits near an existing Massey site.

They were under the impression that Massey had refused help.  Snuffer tells MetroNews that is not the case.

"Massey is just like anybody else.  We appreciate their support anytime we can get it on any project, whether it be them or CONSOL or Patriot, whoever the coal company may be," Snuffer said.

"But I don't know that they have any kind of great responsibility to fix the situation, more than anybody else does."