We have gotten into a nasty habit in Wayne County and if we don’t break it, things are only going to get worse.
We refuse to have the real discussions — to talk about the various elephants in the room — because we are afraid.
Politicians are worried speaking out will cost them elections.
Social justice advocates fear the truth will hurt their causes.
Average citizens don’t want to be labeled racist.
And those concerns, no matter how legitimate they might be, are holding us back.
But we are not afraid to call it like it is.
That brings us to Monday evening and the topic of redistricting — and, more specifically, the conversation at the planning committee’s final meeting.
Before we begin, it’s important to note the objectives and criteria set by the school board when it contracted with Cropper GIS Consulting to facilitate this process.
They didn’t seem overly controversial.
• Populate the new Meadow Lane Elementary School, with a planned capacity of approximately 700 students
• Maximize efficient use of existing classroom space, especially at the elementary level, in light of the state’s k-3 class size reduction mandate
• Evaluate zones at all levels, and reduce overcrowding
And if this process — and the feedback from the community and the committee — were reflective solely of the county’s desire to ease the burden of overcrowded classrooms, to ensure state requirements regarding class size were met, that would have been fine.
But that is not what this process turned into.
Here’s why.
One of the criteria the committee had to adhere to was to consider economic, cultural, and ethnic diversity, to “ensure schools are inclusionary, diverse, and not adversely affected by realignment decisions.”
There’s that word. Diversity. Nobody wants to admit it, but it terrifies people. Most hear it and retreat to one side or the other. Battle lines are drawn.
So, it’s not all that surprising — particularly if you’re familiar with Wayne County — that when the maps were released to the public, people lost it.
Eastern Wayne High School would absorb current Goldsboro High School students from several housing projects?
The student body at GHS would then be balanced out with some Charles B. Aycock students from more affluent neighborhoods?
Feeder schools would change.
Predictably, the conspiracy theories started flying.
• Was the true motivation of the school board to simply use overcrowding as a way to open the door to redistricting with an end game of diversifying inner-city schools and, by doing so, improving test scores?
• Why was Rosewood left untouched?
• Was this an attack on military children?
Those were the questions that, if we’re being honest, were being asked by some.
But it didn’t stop there.
The vitriol came next.
• There is no way my child is going to Goldsboro High School.
• Military families are “terrified” about the prospect of sending their children there.
• I’m going to move to ensure my child won’t be affected.
• I’d rather homeschool or pay private school tuition than allow this.
There were some reasonable concerns voiced — potential transportation woes and the impact of transitions on military children.
But some committee members characterized them as a “red herring.”
Go ahead. Read some of the comments. Form your own opinion.
But let’s be clear. The committee was acting in good faith. So was Cropper GIS founder Matthew Cropper.
You couldn’t, he argued, address overcrowding in elementary schools without examining the county’s education system as a whole. And if you are already talking about redrawing lines, why wouldn’t you attempt to adhere to all of the criteria, including making WCPS more equitable, from a demographic standpoint?
But those maps brought out the very worst in some of us. We started name-calling and finger-pointing.
And when, by the end of Monday’s meeting, it became clear that while the committee would turn over the maps to the school board it would not recommend any of them, it certainly didn’t help people like Northwest Principal Sheila Wolfe.
She told her colleagues on the committee that her school was already at capacity — that they are enrolling two to four students a day and she is basically part-timing it as a magician to ensure her school meets the state’s mandate.
And by the way, a non-decision doesn’t help the county taxpayers or the school system, either.
If even one classroom is out of compliance, the state’s penalty is to force WCPS to pay its superintendent’s salary out of local funds.
That is not cheap.
Those dollars could be used elsewhere.
So, too, could the $75,000 that was used to pay Cropper for services that really didn’t accomplish the mission.
But something positive did come out of this process.
People began a conversation that, should it continue, could actually make a difference in Wayne County.
We need to talk about the fact that our county is in desperate need of new facilities.
We need to accept that in order to make this happen, it might take bonds.
We need to acknowledge that there is still a racial divide here that all too often stands in the way of progress and, more importantly, what is in the best interest of all citizens.
But inferring, as one committee member did Monday, that inner-city schools are failing because quality teachers don’t want to work there is ludicrous.
Arguing that those schools don’t receive the same financial support as their counterparts out in the county is just not true.
Proclaiming that we have not incentivized those who teach in high-poverty areas is false.
And we need to soak in the reality that redrawing district lines might improve test scores but would not narrow the achievement gap.
Think about it for a moment.
Would injecting 100-plus affluent, white students into a failing school improve the school’s overall “score”?
Probably.
And who wouldn’t want better scores, right?
Imagine how attractive Wayne County would be to potential investors, homebuyers and industry leaders, if only the school system showed some positive growth.
But here’s the problem.
Sure, it might improve the schools’ test scores. But it will do nothing to improve the test scores of those students currently failing.
At least one committee member, Keith Copeland, disagrees — and paraphrased a nameless study Monday he said suggested surrounding poor, failing students with wealthy, high-achieving ones would motivate them to do better. They would, he said, benefit from their new classmates’ experiences and that would pull their grades up.
We’ve heard an argument like that before.
More than a decade ago, a former member of the city management team defended investing millions of dollars in downtown Goldsboro despite the fact that the neighborhoods surrounding it were full of blight.
He likened it to putting a lightbulb in the middle of a dark cave. Based on his theory, the light would, over time, spread and illuminate more and more of the cave.
Back then, we thought it was a bizarre analogy. We also thought he was wrong.
So, was that really the case?
Sure, downtown is a vibrant, thriving place today. And make no mistake, our city is better for it and we support the efforts of those city council members who believe in continuing the work that has been done there.
But even Mayor Chuck Allen — the last politician standing from the days when the downtown revitalization plan was put into motion — acknowledged recently that the neighborhoods surrounding the city’s core remain a problem that needs to be addressed.
In other words, the lightbulb is burning bright along Center Street but never illuminated much of the surrounding area.
And when people drive into Goldsboro to visit our downtown, they still have to drive through blight to get there.
The same can be said about forced integration of our failing schools.
Copeland is correct. There are numerous studies that show that surrounding failing, poverty-stricken students with affluent, academically successful ones bring scores up.
But it’s not because those at-risk youths are exposed to success and wealth.
Those students and the scores they will bring with them does nothing to solve what Sean Reardon, one of the nation’s most respected experts on residential and educational segregation, says is the real problem.
Our at-risk students, his research shows, have fewer parents with college degrees and fewer two-parent families to offer educational support.
And yes, when you’re living in poverty and working several jobs to make sure the lights stay on, buying school supplies and books — ensuring that you have the time to read with your toddlers and have rich discussions about their day — become more difficult to manage.
You don’t have the money to pay for music lessons or tutoring. You probably can’t afford pre-K, exacerbating the fact that at-risk students enter kindergarten behind their more affluent peers.
Those are the reasons why there is a correlation between concentrated poverty and low-performing schools.
Because while national trends, as Reardon points out, would indicate that these schools are less likely to attract quality teachers and more likely to be under funded, that is not the case in Wayne County.
And if you spent a day on one of these campuses, you would know that is the dirty little secret about our failing schools — the thing people are terrified to say out loud because it is more profitable and convenient to blame the teachers or the perceived lack of resources.
Their performance — or lack thereof —has little to nothing to do with what is unfolding inside those classrooms.
We challenge you to find a more diverse, professional and dedicated staff then the one at Goldsboro High School — or a school that has more technology available to its student body.
Find a more compassionate group of educators than the ones who greet North Drive Elementary students every morning.
Find a staff member at Central Office that has not bent over backwards to turn things around — whether through applying for Restart status or offering bonuses for teachers who agree to work on those campuses.
But we don’t want to do that.
It’s far easier to sling half-truths, cry racism or belittle teachers than to find a solution.
And the truth is, programs like Head Start that could help chip away at these woes by ensuring every Wayne County child is enrolled in pre-K are underfunded and, too often, become political footballs.
So, where does that leave us, other than down $75,000 on a failed attempt at redistricting?
How can we move forward as a community to ensure every child reaches his or her potential?
It’s going to take more conversation. It’s going to take a financial commitment. It’s going to take a whole lot of hard work by a whole lot of stakeholders.
It’s going to mean addressing problems with our facilities and our growing ESL population.
It’s going to mean catching up with other counties by increasing our local stipend for teachers.
It’s going to mean being brutally honest about the lack of parental involvement in some of our students’ lives.
And it’s going to mean setting aside hurt feelings, name-calling, and finger-pointing.
Just imagine what would happen if we all came together — not just for our children, but for all children.
Imagine the power of tens of thousands of adults who are invested in the future of our local educational system.
If this process taught us one thing — and for $75,000, it better have at least done that — it’s that the time is now.
Let’s shock the world and rise to the occasion.
