Community Schools SOS Press Release

Points To Keep In Mind

Windsor, North Carolina, 1/19/2006 – The opposition to closing our community schools remains strong in spite of the Board of Education’s newest story. After first telling us that the school closings were required by the Department of Justice, and then that they resulted from poor conditions in our facilities, we now discover from the federal study that the idea of building a new school is totally the fabrication of the Board of Education. The newest story explaining that plan is that closing the schools will save large amounts of money. They have yet to tell us how much, even in approximate amounts, nor how they would use those savings to teach our children. Saving money is the story that will be spread in their pess conference and the 5 local meetings in the next couple of weeks. Keep in mind, the Board of Education keeps changing their story as the public rejects their previous opinions.

It is well documented by experts who do not buy into the school consolidation myth, that increased community and transportation costs more than offset the hypothetical savings of school consolidation. In addition this ignores the poorer test scores that consolidated schools produce when compared to community schools.

Here are a couple of questions that the Board of Education should have to answer.

Why does the “Desegregation Planning and Analysis of the Bertie County School District” report done for the Department of Justice (DOJ) conflict with Brent Todd’s (Public Information Officer – Bertie County Schools) article of 11/16/2005? In the article Brent infers that the court wants to close the schools, something that has been said verbally by members of the Board of Education as well. As it turns out the Department of Justice report actually said “. . . . Askewville Elementary, a building in quite good condition . . .” and said nothing about the Aulander facility. It is clear that the DOJ report also does not believe a new school is needed, because we have too many schools already. The exact quote of the DOJ report is “there is a reduced need for school buildings that very much needs to be realized by the school board”.

Why is the Board of Education claiming we are not in “the red”? We have been overspending our revenues each year of late and the reserve fund balance has been tapped for approximately $500,000 a year to make up the shortfall. They argue that as long as we have a fund balance, they have not mismanaged the expenditure versus revenues balance and it doesn’t make them in “the red”. That is a view that assigns a very technical definition to the phrase. The Board of Education has done little to reduce the exorbitant central administration overhead, which should be done before taking actions that impact our children. Our managers have been slow to react to falling revenues and we have not lived within our means.