LUMBERTON — The N.C. State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction may have applied the pressure needed for the Board of Education for the Public Schools of Robeson County to backtrack Friday on closing South Robeson High School — although the local board’s chairman said it was simple math.
“We’re reluctant to use the term ‘takeover,’” Olivia Oxendine, a member of the state Board of Education, said Monday.
The local board’s vote on July 9 to not close the high school as part of a consolidation plan left the door open for the state board to assume more authority over the school district, she said.
“I think they were aware of that,” said Oxendine, a Lumberton resident who is a professor at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
But board Chairman John Campbell said there was no pressure from state education leaders. The decision to close South Robeson was made after facts were presented to the board.
“We, as a board, should have asked the superintendent and the district leadership to study the proposition,” he said. “If we had we would have learned that it would have cost us about $1 million a year.”
After the July 9 vote, local and state education leaders told the local board members about the added cost of keeping South Robeson High open with grades six through eight added to the campus, he said. The local board members were presented with information that proved the move was “untenable,” he said.
“You can’t argue with facts,” Campbell said.
The state board was pleased with the local board’s 9-0 vote Friday to close the school, Oxendine said. Brenda Fairley-Ferebee, whose district includes South Robeson, didn’t vote, and Craig Lowry was absent.
Oxendine called it a good decision, one that should put the Public Schools of Robeson County on the path to financial solvency.
Closing the high school was part of the plan, drafted with help from the state school board and DPI, approved June 18 by the county board. The July 9 decision to keep South Robeson High open for at least one more academic year gave Oxendine pause and concerned her.
“My concern was why did the board decide to leave the school open and add grades six through eight?” Oxendine said.
It’s not a good idea to have 12-year-olds mingling with 18-year-olds, according to Oxendine.
Adding three grades at the South Robeson campus would have brought the annual cost of running the campus to more than $2 million, she said. Operating South Robeson as a middle school will cost the district about $1 million less a year.
“We were very pleased at the end of the meeting on Friday,” Oxendine said. “We were relieved actually.”
Then there is the question of meeting guidelines. For instance, the lunch menu for a middle school is, by U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, different than the menu for a high school.
Members of the state Department of Public Instruction’s Sandhills Region Case Management team began working closely with district leaders after the July 9 meeting, she said. Meetings took place daily, and a lot of work was “intense,” she said.
Team members and state board personnel met with Superintendent Shanita Wooten, members of the district administration and members of the local school board in small groups in the days leading up Friday’s special called meeting. During these meetings Wooten gave the same presentation on schools consolidation and closures that she gave on Friday. People taking part in the sessions were able to ask questions about and seek clarification on details.
“In my opinion, the small-group sessions was a winning strategy,” Oxendine said.
Work on the plan began in earnest in March after board members learned of its financial difficulties. But it appeared to be stalled after the board rejected 27 staff cuts proposed by the superintendent as a way to cost costs.
Afterward, Wooten and her staff laid out a comprehensive plan to save at least $2 million a year through closing inefficient schools with enrollments under 500 students. The plan calls for students at Rowland and Fairgrove Middle schools to move to the South Robeson High School campus, Green Grove students to move to the Fairgrove campus to join its fourth-graders, Hargrave students to move to W.H. Knuckles, all Lumberton fourth-graders to move to Carroll Middle, and Carroll Middle’s sixth-graders to move to Lumberton Junior High School.
And while the $2 million deficit is troubling, another frightening number is the district’s general fund, Oxendine said. A district the size of Robeson County should have an emergency, or “rainy day,” fund of about $4 million. The local system’s rainy day fund was down to about $1 million at the end of the 2018-19 school year.
Oxendine believes the county school district will be ready to implement its consolidation plan by the start of the 2019-20 school year, but there is no time to waste.
“The work they are doing is unlike any work ever done in North Carolina,” Oxendine said. “It’s Herculean. It’s mammoth. It’s 24/7.”
Reach T.C. Hunter by calling 910-816-1974 or via email at [email protected].