Yes, I know they are long, and I know they are, for the most part, boring, but it is important that as many HES parents as possible attend tonight's full Orange County Board of Education meeting.
Orange County Board of Education
Full meeting
Monday, April 23, 2007
7:00 pm
Gravelly Hill Middle School
(Directions are below)
Here is a link to the Board's agenda for tonight's meeting. The CES/HES sub-committee report is scheduled for 8:45 pm, but I hope the public comments period takes more than the scheduled 15 minutes.
The overflow turnout for last month's meeting led BOE Chairman Dennis Whitling to move this meeting to a venue with more space. Let's show him that the effort was not in vain.
Directions to Gravelly Hill Middle School:
I-40 west/85 south
Take exit #160
Turn left at end of ramp onto Mt. Willing Road
Turn right onto West Ten Road
Travel approximately 1.5 miles
The school will be on your right at 4819 West Ten Road (Efland)
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5 comments:
My advice to you all is to listen to what the teachers from your school had to say at the meeting. Also, this editorial in the Herald-Sun had some good advide to you, too.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/chhedits/57-842542.cfm
My link to the editorial doesn't seem to work so well so here is the editorial itself:
No reason for nastiness in merger talks
The Chapel Hill Herald
Apr 26, 2007
Back in February, the Orange County Schools Board of Education received a report on what was indelicately called "the downward spiral" of Central Elementary School. It was the first time the idea of merging Central and Hillsborough elementaries -- almost literally just down the street from each other -- arose publicly.
At the board meeting, district Superintendent Shirley Carraway pointed out that because Central has the district's highest number of at-risk students, its "test results are more significantly impacted than if the population were not of the present makeup."
If Central were to continue with the same demographics and socio-economic makeup, Carraway went on, the school would continue to have difficulty reaching the standards -- that is, higher test scores and more academic achievement -- the board wanted.
So began what should have been the occasion for an important, interesting and serious examination of the impact of socio-economic status on achievement, the academic value of year-round schools and the overall merits of merging two quite dissimilar schools, among other issues
Instead, what we have had too much of has been angry, defensive arguments that quickly degenerated into occasional vituperative name-calling.
Perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising. After all, the two schools though geographically close are wildly different and the parents involved generally come from two different strata of society.
Roughly 70 percent of the students at Central participate in the free and reduced lunch program. Only 12 percent of students at Hillsborough Elementary, a year-round magnet school, qualify for free- and reduced-lunch. Hillsborough Elementary is 84 percent white; Central has about 44 percent white students. Central has the district's worst test scores; Hillsborough has the best.
But as teachers at both schools pointed out at a board meeting earlier this week, the differences shouldn't account for the attitudes. Teachers referred to "condescending and tactless remarks that have been directed at Central Elementary, its parents and its students." It apparently hasn't been enough, they suggested, for parents to support their own school, but it's also been necessary to run down the other.
There may be very good arguments for not merging the two schools and perhaps there are compelling arguments for combining the two. But there is no reason at all for some of the nastiness.
Here is a better editorial:
Let's think beyond black and white
RICK KENNEDY Columnist
Chapel Hill Herald
Wednesday April 25, 2007
Final Edition
Editorial Section
Page 2
Once again, Orange County Schools finds itself wrestling with race rather than with real issues that need attention. This time comes courtesy of Mamie Jay, a black principal at Hillsborough Elementary.
Apparently upon learning earlier this month that her contract would not be renewed, Ms. Jay submitted notice that she would take a paid leave of absence effective the very next day, and lasting for the rest of the school year with intention to then retire rather than return. Abandoning her school in the midst of the academic year seems strikingly spiteful and intended to do damage to the students and teachers who were once her responsibility.
Any principal knows and would readily confirm that nonrenewal is an occupational hazard. The school board does not need an excuse, only an inkling that it can do better for the students for whom they are responsible. With that inkling, the board can, and some would say should, act.
For a principal to behave so disgracefully when a contract is not renewed is inexcusable, and it suggests that those who questioned her capacity to lead did so astutely. Such an abandonment is high treason committed by an
educator, willfully aiding and abetting ignorance, the common enemy in the fight to educate our children. If it hadn't been for Jay actually quitting in the process, she should have been fired, then fired again and then
fired some more for pulling such a stunt.
Addressing the media, she compounded the situation by lobbing incendiary comments, blaming her predicament on racist leanings of the school board,
which by default taints not only the board, but the entire school system and our community. She is quoted as saying "... black principals are being forced out ... what are you to assume?"
Maybe one could assume that when a principal's contract is not renewed
after almost four years, it is because of an ineffective leadership style, one at odds with the school under her command, especially when that style foments rumblings of revolt, an open rebellion springing up from those at her mercy.
Ms. Jay's efforts with her comments seem intended to augment the damage done to the schools, whipping out the race card and using it to fan the conflagration sparked by her words. It seems that she was intent on wounding Orange County Schools, causing real harm to those left behind. It
was an especially hateful assault, and also a prejudiced one, since Ms. Jay automatically assumed her successor chosen by the school board would be of a fairer complexion.
With her race-baiting maneuver, she single-handedly surrounded the Orange County school board, catching the members flatfooted and leaving them speechless, not knowing how to respond to such cheap accusations. As a consequence, we were all treated to the sight of the board dancing around her diatribe, gingerly stamping out fires with their footwork, and pondering how to utter a defense against racist charges.
I know that some would argue it is best to let words such as Jay's roll by, and others may choose to do exactly that, but her comments are so grossly misleading that I am not willing to let them pass unchallenged. To the contrary, her invective needs to be shouted down and not allowed to inflame the atmosphere of our schools.
Thanks to Ms. Jay, we are now reduced to thinking only in black or white. With this mess of her making the only way beyond it is through it, so let's look at the color of things in Orange County Schools.
To start, the district's superintendents have been black for eight of the last nine years. In addition, one of the two assistant superintendents is
black. One third of all directors are black. Thirty percent of principals are black. Fifty percent of associate principals are black. In sum, 40 percent of administrators are black. This is all in the face of a student
population that is only 19 percent black.
Yet in the shadow of this wildly disproportionate representation, the school board has to contend with charges that it is racist? If anything, the opposite seems true. This charge is not just unfair, but more importantly it is a tremendous distraction to the board, a board that abhors such an accusation even when members know it isn't so.
Orange County Schools, existing in constant dread of racist charges
leveled by the black community, strives to deflect those claims,
apparently at the expense of others. Keeping in mind the amount of black representation, consider the number of Hispanic administrators and teachers. There are none, even though more than 7 percent of our students are Hispanic. No Asian representation either.
Can someone please explain how this statistical improbability survives in a system that is purportedly biased against blacks?
The Orange County school board may be guilty of more than a few
shortcomings, but on this occasion it is innocent. For all the issues
confronting our schools and demanding our attention, this is one we can let go. I'm sure those with the Rev. Al Sharpton on speed dial are reaching for their phones by now, fuming and fussing, but this time the facts speak louder than any bitter accusations, no matter how vociferous the claim.
Rick Kennedy, a Duke physician, lives with his wife and daughters in Orange County.
Dr. Kennendy does not have a child attending Hillsborough Elementary. To the best of my knowledge, he has never had a child attend Hillsborough Elementary. He is not currently on the Orange County School Board and has not been during Mrs. Jay's time as principal of HES. Mrs. Jay did not "abandon her school" nor did she "behave so disgracefully." Dr. Kennedy obviously does not know much about the treatment of Mrs. Jay by some school board members over the past several months. All members of the Orange County School Board are not "innocent" in this situation. Has the Board been guilty of racism? I do not know for sure. Have several members of the Board treated another human disrespectfully and unfairly? Yes, that I do know for sure.
Let's hope the Orange County School Board is aware of the North Carolina Open Meetings Law. Emphasis is mine.
N.C.G.S. 143-318.11. regarding Closed sessions, states:
(a) Permitted Purposes. --It is the policy of this State that closed sessions shall be held only when required to permit a public body to act in the public interest as permitted in this section. A public body may hold a closed session and exclude the public only when a closed session is required:
.... ...
(6) To consider the qualifications, competence, performance, character, fitness, conditions of appointment, or conditions of initial employment of an individual public officer or employee or prospective public officer or employee; or to hear or investigate a complaint, charge, or grievance by or against an individual public officer or employee. General personnel policy issues may not be considered in a closed session. A public body may not consider the qualifications, competence, performance, character, fitness, appointment, or removal of a member of the public body or another body and may not consider or fill a vacancy among its own membership except in an open meeting. Final action making an appointment or discharge or removal by a public body having final authority for the appointment or discharge or removal shall be taken in an OPEN MEETING.
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