Community Schools SOS Asks Federal Court To "Allow Time"

Windsor, North Carolina, 1/5/2006 – Almost 200 Bertie citizens met Thursday night, under the auspices of a new group, Community Schools - SOS, hoping to make the federal court aware of the time needed to overcome a renegade Board of Education’s wishes to close the 3 best performing elementary schools in the county. Public pleadings to keep these community schools open were overwhelming at two recent public meetings. The County Commissioners are also on record that funds can be provided for the facility upgrades needed.

In spite of the citizen’s desires to keep the community schools open, by a vote of 3-2, the Board is recommending to the Department of Justice the schools be closed as a way to end a 37 year old desegregation case. However getting Unitary Status to end the case is once again pushed off to the future and is not actually part of the current decision being negotiated with the Department of Justice.

Two keynote speakers motivated tonight's group on the worthiness of their fight against the Board of Education and the Department of Justice.

Joe Avery spoke on how Johnson County successfully sued their board of education to stop unacceptable practices of failing students who had passing grades and firing their best educators for trivial reasons by the Board of Education members. Mr. Avery is the former Education Chairman of the NAACP in Johnston County, President of Falcon Systems and Co-Chairman of the Educate Our Children Foundation.

Lindalyn Kakadelis also spoke on keeping the focus on educational achievement as a reason for saving the schools. Bertie does poorly compared to other school systems on achievement testing and the loss of the 3 best performing schools will be a loss for the county in many ways. Mrs. Kakadelis shared how important parental involvement is to any successful challenge of a Board of Education that is not listening to the citizens. It was a key element of the successful fight to get Unitary Status in Charlotte-Mecklenberg when Ms. Kakadelis was on the Board of Education for that school district. Ms. Kakadelis is currently head of the NC Education Alliance. This organization works to improve education in the United States through community, parent, and governmental involvement in improving our educational system.

The organizational focus of the meeting was how the citizens could make their desires known to the federal court, which will ultimately have to allow the recommended school closings. At present it is doubtful that either the Board of Education lawyers or the Department of Justice lawyers will make the court aware of how much the citizens and Bertie County Commissioners want to close the desegregation case without losing their community schools.

The court is in an unfair position since it may make a decision without knowing the true desires of Bertie citizens. To communicate with the court, about 100 volunteers will collect petition signatures from Bertie registered voters to show the degree to which the Board of Education is ignoring the wishes of the majority of the citizens. In addition, these volunteers are working with a large number of African American parents who are writing the Department of Justice asking them to not close the three community elementary schools in question.

The citizens are hopeful the court will hear of our dilemma and allow us the time to collect these signatures. It may take until May to accomplish this task. The group is also exploring how to fund a lawsuit to represent the desires of the citizens, since 3 of the elected Board of Education members refuse to do so.

SAVE OUR SCHOOLS!

The next scheduled meeting is Thursday January 19th at 6PM at the Council of Aging Building in Windsor.

If you would like to help with this effort, please email one of the following members of the Community Schools - SOS group with imformation on how to contact you.

John Davis
Kelvin Outlaw
Dean Stephens
Mike Williams