Winners at Listening

After so many recent meetings have left people with the feeling that our education leaders did not care what the people want, last night's meeting with Melinda Eure and Dr. Collins-Hart proves they are Winners at Listening.

These two leaders directed a positive community meeting on education at the Windsor Community building on Monday night. The participants talked about educational challenges and dreams and left with a better understanding of both. Both leaders listened and responded openly to questions and comments from the audience.

Mrs. Eure started the meeting by acknowledging that the pending school closures was a big issue which she opposed and something we would cover before the night was through. However, she had other goals she needed input on for the future. Here is a summary of those goals.

Uniforms – Mrs. Eure has changed her position on school uniforms and believes it will help the education process. Research shows uniforms remove dress stereotyping, improve discipline, and make it easier to identify outsiders on the premises. Parents would buy the uniforms, which would cost less than most of the current clothing trends students aspire to keep up with.

Increased recruiting and maintenance of qualified teachers – Mrs. Eure and Dr. Collins- Hart both discussed the need and challenges of getting and keeping better teachers. Plans are underway to improve our image with prospective teachers from both Elizabeth City State University and East Carolina University. The school system is going to need the communities of Bertie County to help in this endeavor and Dr. Collins-Hart shared this area as one of her priorities for our system. A “community based” advisory board working under the Board of Education oversight, would be a great asset for this project.

Discipline – Mrs. Eure sees the high school as the area needing the most improvement in discipline and believes uniforms will help improved discipline. She commended Dr. Collins-Hart for her focus on discipline to date. Dr. Collins-Hart informed us on the task force work underway in this area. Improvements in this area seem likely based on the comments shared at the meeting.

Improved Vocational training – Mrs. Eure wants better training for many of our students who will not go on to college but will need a trade to make them productive citizens. She asked for interested parties to help with feasibility work on how this can be accomplished.

Improved SAT scores and increasing the number of college bound students – Mrs. Eure expressed her view that we should develop a program to increase the scores of our students taking the test and find ways to increase the number of students who see college as a possible alternative to ending their education after high school.

After covering these goal areas, the draft of the current 5 year strategic plan was shared with the audience. Dr. Collins-Hart informed everyone that the board of education would not vote on the plan until March and any input or suggestions should be sent to her attention.

Comments from the audience then moved to the school closings. The consensus of comments from the audience was that these closures would be detrimental to the students, against the citizen’s wishes, and based on a facility discrimination allegation that the Heery study proves does not exist. Challenges to the recent cost per student financial justification offered by the board were voiced by the audience. For example, it was pointed out that over $25,000 was included in the JP Law per student cost calculation and that this cost will go away after the sewer system was fixed.

Other challenges were presented but are too numerous to cover here. Mrs. Eure thanked the crowd for their support on keeping the schools open and confirmed she was absolutely against closing these schools. The final audience comments on the school closings was a request that everyone against school closing should call their county commissioner and ask they do a friend of the court brief to inform the federal court that the county wants to close the current desegregation case but not by closing schools.

The closing discussion of the evening was a heartfelt plea from one of our best teachers to remember that many honest hardworking professionals, who have committed no errors, are “under the microscope” because of what has happened. The plea was for us to move beyond our shortcomings so the educational community could regain a sense of respect and appreciation in the community. The crowd responded supportively to the comment but was reminded by a member of the audience that poor past leadership had allowed the problems to elevate to the current level. The public is not to blame for the publicity that all of us are working and living under right now. That blame lies squarely on the shoulders of some members of the Board of Education.

The superintendent pointed out that the system had been forced to overcorrect to some extent in order to regain the public trust and she thanked her staff for their support during a trying time. Mrs. Eure pointed out that we are moving back to a more balanced use of the “microscope” and while the board is more aware of financial controls, they feel improvements are in place to prevent any future problems. Any actions taken about past financial management miscues (previous administration) will be handled by the SBI who is the only remaining entity looking at past financial transactions.

The was a positive meeting and hopefully everyone left feeling like some progress had been made.