School board to continue discussion of office request

Published 12:10 am Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The Board of Education received a formal request for use of its current offices Monday, and moved to continue the discussion in its January meeting.

The Paul L. Dunbar Charter School organization hopes to transform the old building into a community center, and eventually a school for East Spencer when the board moves house to the Wallace Educational Forum in early 2016.

Currently, East Spencer has no schools and no community center — two things community members consider a huge deficit.

“We need help, we need a facility,” Kenneth Muhammed El, president of the charter organization, said.

East Spencer’s last community center, the Paul Laurence Dunbar Center, burned down last year.

“We don’t really have the adequate infrastructure to do the things we need to do,” Muhammed said.

While waiting for their charter to be approved, the organization wants to repurpose the building into a community center that will house a pre-school and offer after-school programs, occupational training and other community wraparound services.

They call it the Sankofa Community Center, named for a bird from Ghanese mythology that flies forward while looking backward. A community member during the public comment section said it exemplifies the idea that “it is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”

And in many ways, the people of East Spencer feel they have been forgotten. The people who live there are aware East Spencer’s reputation, commenter Alex Clark said, is seen as if “it’s a wasteland” by the rest of the county.

East Spencer has six percent of the county’s population, Muhammed said, but 72 percent of its poverty, and it has no businesses or central gathering place to speak of. The Sankofa Community Center would work to uplift the entire community and to help the people of East Spencer take pride in their history and culture.

For them, the building and proposed center is a sign of hope.

“It is vital to the community that we have something we can call home,” Tony Hillion of East Spencer said. Others talked about how important it was for the community to have a place where they felt safe, valued and respected.

Dr. Susan Lee spoke of the importance of not just offering a good education for children, but making sure that the community was educated and healthy, as well. She said a quote from the “Voices from the Margin” performance stuck with her.

“Children do not enter schools alone. They enter with their families, they enter with their communities.”

Board member Dr. Richard Miller asked if the Paul. L. Dunbar Charter School had presented its proposal before the town board. While members of the organization had discussed the move with the town, Muhammed said, they did not receive its support.

The town of East Spencer has been discussing the use of the South Long Street office as a community center with the Board of Education for two years, Miller said, and the Board of Education took action to allow an engineering study of the building.

“I don’t want this board to get between two factions that are working towards the same cause,” Miller said.

The board decided to bring the topic back as a discussion item for January’s meeting so they could discover the results of the engineering study. They asked Muhammed to speak to East Spencer’s town board, and to bring a statement of finances for the charter organization.

“I know that we can turn this community around,” Muhammed said.

Knox Middle School co-principals Dr. Latoya Dixon and Dr. Michael Waiksnis presented a proposal to transform the inner-city school into a magnet school.

Knox is a school that has a large number of over- and underperforming students, Dixon said, and she believed it would take a drastic overhaul of the school to meet the needs of both groups.

Dixon and Waiksnis proposed to make Knox an E-STEAM school — a curriculum that focuses on the environment, science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics. With close ties to the Center for the Environment and Horizons Unlimited, Dixon believes that this approach to traditional curriculum would strengthen her students’ learning experience.

“What this approach would entail is using the environment as the context for learning,” Dixon said.

The plan would also make Knox a year-round school, and add an extra hour to the school day that would allow for learning to be tailored to an individual academic profile. Students performing under grade level would have more time to get the extra help they need, and students performing above grade level would be able to take classes for high school credit or participate in internships.

“We have a lot of students that need a lot of work that we don’t think that tweaking and making small adjustments we don’t think is the answer,” Waiksnis said.

Students within Knox’s normal attendance area would be guaranteed a seat at the magnet school and applications would be accepted for students outside the attendance area who wish to attend. Dixon and Waiksnis will be applying for a five-year grant to fund the project in January.

“This is just the beginning of this,” Wagoner said. “So we’re not going to forget about it. We’ve got a long way to go . . . we look forward to continuing the journey.”

In other business:

  • Josh Wagoner was elected chairman of the board with a 4-3 vote. Dean Hunter was elected as vice chairman with a 4-3 vote.

 

  • The 2014-2015 financial audit showed that the school system spent 74.1 percent of its budget on instructional costs and 25.8 percent on other costs — higher than normal due to the systems $2 million investment on computers. The 2014-2015 general fund had a revenue of $36,092,927 with $39,549,305 in expenditures for a net of $2,103,100. At the end of the 2014-2015 school year, $4,877,066 was still unassigned.

 

  • Of the nearly $5 million left over from the 2014-2015 general fund, the board elected to appropriate a portion for “critical or timely needs,” $2 million of available funds could be appropriated before the board hits the 8 percent budget minimum set by the Local Government Commission. In a 4-2 vote, the board chose to appropriate $85,000 to hire and train two behavioral specialists for Koontz and to create a district classroom, located at Isenberg Elementary, to help students with severe behavior problems. The board also chose to allot $33,000 to hire a recruiter and to cover their travel and material costs. Allen said that the school system still had 50 or 60 openings for certified positions, and Superintendent Dr. Lynn Moody referred to the teacher shortage as a “crisis.” An additional $16,0000 was appropriated to provide training for new principles and to assist in the search and training of a new CFO.

 

  • The board approved the 2016-2017 school calendar with school starting on Monday, Aug. 29, and ending on Friday, June 9.

 

  • The board approved the purchase of a desk for their new board room at Wallace Educational Forum. The desk will cost $22,988.17. The Wallace Educational Forum’s furniture purchasing went under budget and the board decided to use the extra funds to purchase a new desk to fit the room. The new desk will allow for the installation of newer technology and will cover electric cables and provide a safer workplace, Moody pointed out.

 

  • The Wallace Educational Forum has its dome structure in place and ceiling grid complete. Painting has been finished and masonry is 99 percent complete. They are setting up final inspection dates.
  • The board discussed field trip safety to locations such as New York City and Washington D.C. in light of federal terrorism travel advisories.
  • Heard first readings for policies in reduction in force, family life education programs, and community use of facilities.
  • Approved new high school courses and new high school academies at South, West and North Rowan high schools.