Oct. 14, 2011: Eastern Wake ignored in school politics

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

Cross the Neuse River anywhere east of Raleigh in Wake County, and you've entered the land of the ignored when it comes to school-board politics.

While leaders and residents of all stripes in the rest of the county argued for two years over "neighborhood schools" and what that might mean for poverty rates in downtown Raleigh schools - culminating in the school board chairman's loss in the election Tuesday - the nearly neighborhood schools in Eastern Wake just quietly got poorer. 

"Hodge Road Elementary was 70 percent poor under the old board, and 70 percent under the new one," says Shannon Hardy, a Knightdale mother of two and teacher at Exploris Charter School. "School assignment is not the solution."

If you've heard any Eastern Wake murmurs at all, it's likely because of Hardy and the rest of the Knightdale 100. This parent-advocate group, birthed in 2009 by Knightdale Mayor Russell Killen, isn't caught up in the partisanship that pervaded Tuesday's vote. Members can barely tell you, in fact, which school board representative covers what part of the town now that Knightdale has been split among three districts. 

No amount of school choice, which the assignment model now on the table touts, is going to change the reality that well more than 50 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches in all but two of the schools in the historically rural area. In such a large swath of the county, only a diversity of housing can alter that number.

So rather than focus on politics and percentages, the Knightdale 100 have their sights on programs and perceptions.

"We realized my child's success relies on the success of all the children," Hardy says. "If you have money, you just buy a house in a rich neighborhood, but if you're just hard-working middle-class or single parents, your child's success in the classroom depends on all the other kids in the classroom."

What the group seeks are higher expectations for poorer students from parents and teachers. High-quality teaching, the members say, is what leads to student achievement.

Opting out of schools

They also want - and have snared - new programs they hope will attract families and keep the town's higher-achieving students from opting out. Two years ago, 400 Knightdale-area high schoolers were in private, charter or magnet schools.

"So many times we're focused on low-performing kids, and getting them up to level is important, but you can't do that to the exclusion of high-performing students," Killen says, adding that new Wake schools Superintendent Tony Tata completely gets that.

"Tata has done more and given more attention to this issue since he's been here than anybody the entire time I've been working on this, for at least seven or eight years," Killen says. "He sees it, and he wants to make it better."

The program equity that the group seeks would include more AP classes at Knightdale High - and some acknowledgment that Hodge Road Elementary needs help.

"Why is Spanish being taught to students in Cary, but the non-Spanish-speaking students at Hodge Road Elementary, which is more than 50 percent Hispanic, don't get any Spanish lessons?" Hardy asks. "Why isn't this a bilingual school?"

Plans killed by economy

Before a bypass opened in 2005, a continuously clogged U.S. 64 hindered higher-end development in Eastern Wake. The bypass brought bigger subdivisions to the drawing board - several, unfortunately, stayed there when the economy went bust.

The planned Wendell Falls, with its 4,000 houses on 1,400 acres, even had its own exit off the bypass. Those houses would have finally helped naturally diversify a town where 75 percent of the housing is considered affordable. The project is in bankruptcy. 

In Knightdale, the Langston Ridge development sits off Hodge Road with its roads paved and its street lights on, illuminating acres of weeds and trash, but not one house.

 More than 200 homes costing in the $200,000s to $400,000s were planned. 

"Until we have more high-end housing, you just can't assign around that," says Killen, who decided that the only answer in the meantime was to find parents willing to improve the schools, which routinely have some of the county's lowest test scores, a priority. 

Robin Woodlief, who grew up in Wendell and has two children in Eastern Wake schools, is one of several passionate parents who attended early organizational meetings and answered the call.

"The demographics are what they are," she says. "I think in the past there's been a mentality if you were poor, you weren't smart and you couldn't do the work. 

"It takes awhile to get over that and convince the kids as well as the parents that just because you don't have any money doesn't mean you don't have a brain up there."

One way the Knightdale 100 are trying to reach the area's parents is with forums; for instance, one this year touted the importance of taking algebra in eighth grade and another explained how best to measure teacher performance.

"I think that our parents in Knightdale want to do the hard work as parents, they just don't know how," Hardy says. "Further, our teachers are well-intentioned, but they under-challenge our children. It is hard for a teacher to know how hard to push when the parents have not gone to college or don't naturally push the child themselves."

An area at a crossroads

It's clear that Eastern Wake County is at a crossroads. Although there are always exceptions, Tim Simmons of the Wake Education Partnership says research shows that 60 percent poor is the point at which a school starts losing families with the means to leave. 

East Wake Academy, a charter school in Zebulon, already has 1,100 students and 600 waiting to get in.

Without more higher-end housing in Eastern Wake, the regular schools will keep edging closer to tipping. And the self-perpetuating cycle is that the poorer the schools become, the less likely that developers will build near them.

"The geography of Eastern Wake and the economy have not been kind," Simmons says. 

"You can roll over or you can do whatever is possible to get those schools into a position of being a viable option. If you can attract one group, then you can attract another."

If the Knightdale 100 can hold the line - and even improve school quality - until the economy improves, development will take care of itself, he says, citing the Northern Virginia schools that are good only because people moved there to be close to D.C., and demanded better schools.

"It's really common for parent groups to get involved because kids can't get into AP classes or whatever, and once they accomplish that, they're done," Simmons says. "This group, it's pretty clear they are in it for the long haul."

Yes, they are. And that's partly because they love the area's diversity and the small-town feel that still permeates the ball fields and restaurants. 

"Around here, we always have the most diverse soccer team, the most diverse summer swim teams. That's Americana, the spirit of America, pluralism," Hardy says. "You don't ask what you can do for your kid. You ask what you can do for your school system, what you can do to support your neighbor's kid in their bad times."

During the school assignment debate, many people said they were willing to spend more on better teachers and programs at schools that started struggling. Your Eastern Wake neighbors have been struggling for a while now. 

Maybe we should help the Knightdale 100 stabilize a teetering quarter of the county until the housing market stirs again. If we let these schools languish, development is far less likely to arrive.

So far, the Knightdale 100 have been paying for their progress mostly from their own pockets, although Woodlief is working to get the group nonprofit status. 

She doesn't want to think about how much money - not to mention hours - she has given to the cause.

"If we can turn it around and get good things to happen, it's worth it," she says. "My parents always told me you can preach to your children all day long, but unless they see you do it, it doesn't mean anything. 

"I'm teaching my children that if they get involved in the community, they can make a difference."

Next week: The group's accomplishments - including STEM schools in Eastern Wake - and praise.

bwheeler@newsobserver.com or 929-829-4825

By the numbers

$81,536 Median family income in Wake County in 2009

$107,587 Median family income in Cary

$71,543 Median family income in Raleigh

$74,101 Median family income in Knightdale

$52,308 Median family income in Wendell

$51,250 Median family income in Zebulon

47.5 The percentage of Wake adults who have a four-year degree or higher

62.3 The percentage of Cary adults with at least a four-year degree

47.5 The percentage of Raleigh adults with same 

39.9 The percentage of Knightdale adults with same 

22 The percentage of Wendell adults with same 

10.8 The percentage of Zebulon adults with same

Oct. 7, 2011: Expect schools fallout

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

Eastern Wake County, you might be surprised to learn, boasts the state's fourth-largest charter school. Almost 1,100 students attend East Wake Academy, a K-12 campus in Zebulon, and its waiting list approaches 600 students.

That so many parents want in might make a person wonder whether there's something they want out of. 

The academy's average three-part SAT score is 1451, below most of the county but higher than Knightdale High, whose 1368 average is the lowest. The academy was recently named a School of Distinction.

Knightdale High also has the county's highest percentage of high schoolers qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch, at 40.4 percent.

And Knightdale High had the county's highest number of teachers requesting transfers last year. Hmm.

 Most of Eastern Wake's schools now have free and reduced-price lunch populations nearing 60 percent. Wakelon Elementary in Zebulon has more than 70 percent. 

Knightdale's Hodge Road Elementary has an F&R population of more than 70 percent, too. Across the street, 76 subsidized apartments are going up. Brilliant.

Right up U.S. 64, Wendell has the county's highest percentage of subsidized affordable units at more than 11 percent of all housing.

Know how much subsidized housing western Wake has? In Morrisville, that'd be 0. Apex? Cary? Each has 1 percent.

We used to have a school board that tried, not terribly successfully, to mitigate the imbalances of our housing patterns by keeping the numbers of poor children assigned to one school as low as possible. It recognized that high-poverty schools are challenging schools, where many children arrive ill-prepared with myriad needs that can burn out teachers quickly. And it realized that wasn't good for the children or the county.

Now we have a board that wanted to make "neighborhood" schools the priority, even though that can create high-poverty schools that can lead those neighborhoods to decay when many residents with the means leave. 

The current board opened Walnut Creek Elementary knowing that more than 80 percent of its students would be poor, but it gave the principal a $7,000 bonus and paid for him to fly around the country to recruit teachers willing to work there.

Because that's a model we can afford to replicate 60 times?

Twist any metric you like to make a point about Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which ended diversity efforts and went to "neighborhood" schools 10 years ago. Know what North Carolina's fastest-growing county is? It ain't on the coast.

It's Union County, right east of Mecklenburg. Hmm.

Despite a move toward board consensus this week on a choice-based assignment plan, far too many questions remain. And the answers will depend on the outcome of Tuesday's school board election.

Johnston County might want to get ready.

Sept. 30, 2011: People are needed more than goods

This originally appeared in The News & Observer:

VANDEMERE On the sidewalks of this Pamlico County town of 254 souls, sticky insulation is piled high. A plaid couch sits in a front yard under shreds of sheetrock. The windows of the decades-old homes lining the main road are open, in the hope that the bare studs inside will dry.

A month after Hurricane Irene sent the Bay River surging into these houses - where fishermen and farmers and tugboat drivers live, where the waters had never reached in recent memory - time has nearly stood still. 

People are waiting. Waiting for insurance checks. Waiting for the plywood floors ripped of soaking, stinking carpet to dry. Hoping for help.

"Our biggest need is volunteers," says the Rev. Scott Fitzgerald, pastor of Bayboro Missionary Baptist Church, which has become disaster-relief central in Pamlico County. "We have all the equipment. We have the people to lead them and do what needs to be done. If they call me and tell me who they're bringing and when they want to come, I can match them up with their skill abilities."

Not food. Not clothes. Not money. The pleas coming from Pamlico are for people. And for mosquito spray. And for fans, because fans are blowing inside wet homes 24 hours a day. Nothing can be rebuilt until everything is dry. And it just keeps raining.

Vandemere, 30 or so miles north of New Bern, is where my friend Donna Tyndall's family has lived for generations. Her father, Jasper Voliva, 71, was a commercial fisherman there, as were his father and grandfather.

It's a town where everybody knows everybody, where the people who see Donna as we walk around looking at the destruction hug her and ask after her mama, Julia, who is going through chemo for lymphoma.

Jasper and Julia have lived in their home on the town's main thoroughfare for more than 50 years, but don't ask Jasper whether he has lived his whole life in Vandemere. He'll tell you with a twinkle in his blue eye that his life's not quite done yet, thanks.

Daughter Anna Simeon and her husband, Greg, live beside them with their youngest child, and daughter Crystal Paul and her three children live across the street. Donna and her husband, Kevin, live around the corner with Donna's two sons.

When Irene came calling Aug. 27, all four families were flooded out of their homes - and dispersed.

The two Volivas, the three Simeons and the four Pauls are piled into a doublewide a few streets over; its owner recently passed away, and his relatives were kind enough to say, "Y'all use it."

The Tyndalls have moved into Kevin's mother's house miles away, closer to New Bern, where Donna works in a surgical office, but too far away from Julia for Donna's comfort. She calls her mama every day and hates that she can't see her that often now, thanks to Irene.

"We've had to do what we had to do," Donna says. "Families, whoever got flooded, you take your family in. Everybody's just living with everybody until it gets fixed."

Donna will tell you she has it better than most. She and Kevin had flood and content insurance because the mortgage company required it. A lot of people in Vandemere didn't have such insurance because they have lived there so long, and they own their homes, which had never been flooded before. 

With no money coming and no way to do the work themselves, Donna wonders how many of her hardscrabble neighbors can possibly go on.

"The first thing most everybody did was rip the carpet out," she says. "And you've got older people. It's hard for these people who can't physically do this work - move the furniture, rip carpet out. When we ripped Mama's carpet out, it was still dripping water. It's heavy."

'We'll get through it'

Exactly a month after the hurricane, Julia's ruined pantry is still sitting among her other possessions on the sidewalk, which is strewn with LEGO blocks, crayons, linoleum shards and broken Christmas bulbs.

"This isn't a big city where people have big-city jobs," Donna says. "Most people live off the land or the water. It's bad. When you ride along the road and you just see everybody's possessions, everything they had on the side of the road, it's kind of heartbreaking."

Right next to the Bay River, Benny Rose Jr. is pacing in front of a huge pile of debris that used to be his mother's house. The brick beauty had stood for more than 40 years without being flooded. After Irene, it had to be bulldozed.

He asks Donna about Ms. Julia and her chemo. She asks about his mama, Margaret, and how she's doing in the wake of her bulldozed home. Benny has come to see the remains because Ms. Margaret simply can't face it.

As we swat continuously, talk turns to the mosquitoes, which have bred to epic proportions in all of the standing water. The two decide maybe the biters aren't near as bad as they were last week, when The N&O ran a story citing an internationally known expert saying he had found in Pamlico County this month the highest concentrations of the insect that he has ever encountered in the nation.

But the bugs are still bad enough that the children have not played outside since the hurricane.

Bad enough that nobody can mow the grass, if they took a notion to, which only adds one more eyesore to the depressing landscape.

"We'll get through it," Benny tells Donna as they hug. "Everybody's still here. That's what matters."

Hopeful but tired

It's a sentiment Donna has expressed numerous times throughout the evening. She feels especially blessed because Kevin's family owns Pamlico Home Builders, and he clearly knows how to wield a hammer.

With the additional help of Donna's two teenage boys - and the comfort of knowing an insurance check, size is still a question, at least is coming - her house is emptied and ready for work.

"People are trying to stay positive and help each other," she says. "I don't know what we would have done without churches, even ones outside Pamlico County. We've had a real outpouring in this community, really helping each other." 

But the people of Pamlico are tired. They have to work their jobs, then try to repair their homes while displaced or while living in the top of a damaged and foul-smelling two-story home or, in some cases, tents in their still-wet yards.

The Rev. Fitzgerald of the Bayboro Baptist Church welcomes help any day, any time. Just call.

"If you have 15 people coming down in one day, we could use 200 people coming on a day," he said. "We could use 300 people coming. We've got over 300 or 400 jobs that need to be done, and I'm sure that's not all the jobs. That's just the ones who have come here who said, 'I need help.' 

"The more people who come, the faster we can get things done."