mbutts@heraldsun.com; 419-6684
DURHAM – Durham school board members on Thursday formalized their opposition to a proposed charter school opening in Research Triangle Park this fall, expressing concerns that the school presents what they see as barriers to low-income students attending.
At its regular monthly meeting Thursday, the board unanimously – excepting board member Fredrick Davis, who was absent due to a death in his family – approved a resolution urging the state Board of Education to deny Research Triangle High School’s application. It is among nine proposed charter schools that received the backing of the N.C. Public Charter School Advisory Council earlier this month to open through a “fast-track” process that’s reserved for applicants that can get schools up and running in less than a year.
Charter schools are public schools – and therefore tuition-free – but operate independently of local school districts. The “fast-track” process comes after the state Legislature’s lifting of a 100-school cap on charters last year.
School board member Natalie Beyer said she’s proud of Durham Public Schools’ focus on providing “diverse learning environments for our children” and spoke of board members’ concerns about the potential for further racial and socioeconomic re-segregation if RTHS is approved.
Beyer said she’s concerned by what she and other board members see barriers to low-income students applying to and succeeding at RTHS, including the need for at-home technology and limited transportation and nutrition budgets.
She also noted that RTHS’ application was filed by Pamela Blizzard, who is executive director of the RTP-based Contemporary Science Center and a founder of Raleigh Charter High School. While that school is a fixture on national school rankings, at 73.1 percent white, it looks homogenous when compared with demographics of the Wake County Public School System.
Blizzard said earlier this week that RTHS is working to recruit a diverse population of students, and Darrell Allison, president of the charter advocacy organization Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina and a member of RTHS’ board of directors, said in an interview Thursday that he’s confident that RTHS’ demographics will be quite different from those at Raleigh Charter.
For one thing, he said, unlike Raleigh Charter, the school’s budget does set aside money – although not enough, school board members say – for meals and transportation.
Allison agreed to serve on RTHS’ board only after hearing about the proposed school’s “adamant and strategic” efforts to draw a diverse group of students from Durham and Wake counties.
The school’s application estimates that of the 160 students it would serve in 2012-13, the majority of them – 104 students – would come from Wake County. The estimate puts 40 students coming from Durham County and 16 from Orange and Chatham counties.
Allison, who is African-American, recalled being mentored at N.C. Central University by civil rights attorney and former NCCU Chancellor Julius Chambers and civil rights activist Howard Fuller. In following their example, he said, if he’d had any inkling that RTHS leaders were targeting upper-income, mostly white students for enrollment, he never would have thrown his support behind the school.
“What moved me was the opposite,” he said. “What I saw was a very high-concentrated effort, a very focused effort, to make sure that this high-quality education that minority, low-income children would have access to it.”
Blizzard said in an interview last year that she envisions the school serving as a “real model and an incubator for programs we can share with schools and teachers across the state.”
That collaborative spirit means that the school would not just benefit RTHS students, but also students and teachers across North Carolina, Allison said.
He pointed to the need for STEM-focused schools in North Carolina, noting the decline of the state’s textile and furniture industries. For example, he said, his hometown of Kannapolis was once home to a textile mill, but that’s gone now, its void filled by a biotechnology center.
But critics of the school point to the fact that Durham Public Schools already offers several STEM programs, like Hillside New Tech High School, Southern School of Engineering and City of Medicine Academy.
Allison doesn’t buy the idea that the STEM niche has been filled sufficiently in Durham County.
“The more quality options that we have available to parents, the better the chances that all children will be adequately educated,” he said, “and the fewer quality options we have on the table for parents, the greater the chances that not all children will get the quality education.”
After school board members took turns reading portions of the three-page resolution at their meeting Thursday, board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown urged community members to “be as aggressive as we have been” in opposing the school’s approval by contacting members of the state school board who will review the applications next week and approve or reject applications in March.
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Other school board news
In other news out of Thursday’s school board meeting:
- The school district announced several administrative appointments, all effective March 1:
Tom Seckler, now principal at Little River Elementary School, will serve as the first principal of Lucas Middle School, set to open in August.
Debbie Pitman, now area superintendent for northern elementary schools, will assume the role of assistant superintendent of Student, Family and Community Services (formerly Student Support Services). This role is being vacated by Eunice Sanders, who is retiring.
Also, Kristin Bell will serve as executive director of the Exceptional Children’s Department, and Area Superintendent Stacey Wilson-Norman will assume oversight of all elementary schools.
- The school board approved a resolution urging the state Legislature to reinstate the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Scholarship Program.
- The board approved, as is required by the state, criteria by which the district’s two alternative schools, Lakeview School and the Durham Performance Learning Center, are assessed in the state’s ABCs accountability system. Of the eight available options, each school must be assessed on three. The board accepted the recommendations of each campus’ school improvement team.
Lakeview chose to be assessed on attendance, student progress and proficiency, and parent involvement. PLC chose to be assessed on attendance, student progress and proficiency, and higher expectations for student achievement.
