By Sarah Campbell
scampbell@salisburypost.com
EAST SPENCER — School officials addressed the recent controversy surrounding the upkeep of Knox Middle School on Monday.
Superintendent Dr. Judy Grissom told the board the school had passed the Clean School Inspection conducted by Safelle, an independent inspection company, for years prior to March.
“As you may have seen in some of the reports, Knox was the only school that did not meet the ‘clean school’ criteria,” she said. “We had a discussion with the principal and custodial staff and a plan for improvement was developed.”
Knox received a score of 17 on the spring inspection. Points are given in areas that need improvement.
The school got “excellent” marks for lawn and parking lot maintenence, but took a hit for entrance ways and sidewalks, hallways, restrooms and office area and gym upkeep.
Comments from the report include “all hallways have dirty wax,” “staining in many urinals/toilets and “gym floor needs cleaning, dirt also in edges/corners.”
School board member Dr. Richard Miller pointed out that the school has had leadership changes since the inspection.
Principal Rodney Burton stepped down and Dr. James Davis took over at the school in July.
“We have to have the appropriate adminstration in place who not only manages the academics but also the facility,” Miller said. “We have that in place now and can expect appropriate changes.”
School board Chairman Dr. Jim Emerson said that despite the issues at Knox, it is still a clean and safe environment.
“I’ve heard comments that the conditions are deplorable, rundown, unacceptable,” he said. “If these comments were true then the school would not have met very specific government guidelines regarding sanitation and safety.”
The school received a 93 on its county health inspection at the end of January.
Points were taken off for broken tiles in the showers. A note was also made to “repair floors, walls and ceilings as needed.
William Peoples, vice president of the Rowan County chapter of the NAACP, spoke to the board during the public comment period, calling the conditions at Knox negligent.
Peoples accused school officials of racism, saying he believes the school has been deliberately overlooked because of it’s high minority population.
“I feel like as a taxpayer and a graduate of Knox that there has been some deliberate oversight,” he said.
School board member Bryce Beard said the day Cornerstone Church Pastor Bill Godair took a tour of the Knox the campus was in the middle of a “massive comprehensive cleanup to prepare for the beginning of the year.”
Godair later wrote a letter to county commissioners and the Post describing the “filth, roaches and rat feces” at the school and calling for board members to put off plans for a new central office to make improvements at schools.
“It’s been taken to another level now, it seems it has been made into a political issue,” Beard said. “The priority has always been our school buildings, we have always put the students first.”
Miller said people could probably drop in at any of the district’s 35 schools and find things amiss, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the environment is bad.
“I’m sure you’ve all been home to find a mouse running around and wonder where it came from because your house is clean,” he said. “The day that we forget that we are all human and we are all in this process together, we are forgetting what we are all about.”
School board member Mike Caskey said despite the negatively surrounding Knox, there has been an outpouring of volunteers to clean and paint.
“At the very least I think Knox is going to be better for it,” he said. “I think we’ve got our attention on it.”
Contact reporter Sarah Campbell at 704-797-7683.
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