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DURHAM — The National Association of Educators has pledged $1.25 million over the next five years to help Durham improve academic performance by black male students.
The grant was announced Tuesday morning by Gov. Beverly Perdue and other officials at Lowe’s Grove Middle School. The host school is one of six in the Durham district that will share $250,000 annually over the life of the grant.
Perdue ranked the grant at the top of her small-, medium- and big-potatoes scale.
“For North Carolina, what Durham Public Schools and the Durham Association of Educators are beginning to do because of the support, the $1.2 million of NEA, is purely and simply big potatoes,” Perdue said.
The NEA Foundation awarded the grant to Durham as the first major expansion of its six-year-old Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative. Columbus, Ohio, and Springfield, Mass., received grants similar to Durham’s. The foundation has piloted the initiative in Seattle, Milwaukee and Hamilton County (Chattanooga), Tenn.
Most of the activities funded by the new grant have yet to be determined. Teachers, principals, district officials and advisers from UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. Central University and elsewhere will collaborate on designing projects that are worthy of funding. At least a few of the schools will likely spend money for home visits by teachers.
“If we can guarantee that every child had one adult — just one, one adult — that really cared, that really was committed to their educational outcome, we could turn so much stuff around,” Perdue said. “We could. And you all have made a — you’ve thrown your marker in the sand. You’ve made a decision.”
The schools participating in the grant are Eno Valley Elementary, Chewning Middle and Northern High schools and Fayetteville Street Elementary, Lowe’s Grove Middle and Hillside High schools. Each trio is part of a K-12 feeder pattern.
Hank Hurd, Durham’s interim superintendent, recently warned the Durham school board of cuts of at least $7 million for next year. But he called the grant “awesome.”
“This could be the shot in the arm that pushes us to achieve our goal over the next few years of eliminating the achievement gap,” Hurd said.
“We’re just elated to have these resources,” he added.
School board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brow said the grant positions the district to attract positive attention. “If we do it in Durham and do it right like we are going to do then it will be a model for the nation,” she said.
Applying for the grant was the idea of Donald Barringer, former president of the Durham Association of Educators and now Perdue’s adviser on teachers. He received support from then-DPS Superintendent Carl Harris.
“We’ve come a long way, we really have,” Barringer said after Tuesday’s announcement. “And it is phenomenal to see the partnership.”
He then high-fived Terri Mozingo, the district’s chief academic officer.
Cooperation between the district and the teachers’ organization will be a hallmark of the grant.
Sheri Strickland, the president of the N.C. Association of Educators — a branch of the National Education Association and the Durham association’s parent organization — said Durham was chosen by the NEA because of its existing programs.
“This isn’t the kind of thing that you can just sit down and make up,” she said. “You have to already have a vision for it. You have to already have some things, some foundation, some things in place to build on before a group like the NEA Foundation would consider a school system for a grant like this. So I just think that it speaks well of what’s already going on in Durham Public Schools.”
Strickland hopes that the collaboration between educators and administrators here will be copied elsewhere. “If the school system itself and the educators can come together to figure out what is the right thing to do for the children then there is [a] so much better chance that any initiative or any reform effort is going to be successful,” she said.
