By MARY EVA CASSADA and
SYLVIA O. McLAUGHLIN
It was here that sparks flew late Saturday afternoon at a 5 p.m. meeting called by Councilmen Jack Dunavant and Phil Hollis. Dunavant said he wanted to offer a second resolution, this one endorsing yet another alternative:one that he and Halifax Mayor Leon Plaster had discussed on Friday morning with School Superintendent Paul Stapleton. The new resolution, Dunavant said, included sending the 67 students who reside in the Town of Halifax and attend either Sinai or Halifax Elementaries to the new South Boston school. (See cheat sheet.) Furthermore, the new South Boston school would be named the Halifax-South Boston Elementary School. The present Halifax Elementary facility would be kept open for possibly the four year old program, the Law & Leadership Academy and the JROTC program.
Finally a public hearing would be held next year to let the public discuss how the plan has worked. He said the new plan would mean that the South Boston school would have 847 students, still well below its capacity of 950 students. Dunavant said students are being bused into Halifax Elementary to keep its enrollment up. “It ceased to be a community school years ago,” he said.
“If we stick with what we’ve got, we don’t know what we’re gonna get,” explained Dunavant. He said he had gotten very favorable reaction to the new plan from the people he had discussed it with.
Dunavant was a prime leader in the community-school movements several years ago to keep tiny Virgilina Elementary open (15 miles away) as well as Halifax Elementary (in sight of his front yard).
“I’m being painted as someone who wants to close Halifax Elementary,” he said. Instead, “I’m just being practical.”
Councilman Chuck Parker wanted to know who with Dunavant had called for the special meeting to which Councilman Phil Hollis responded that he had agreed to call for the meeting, hoping to hear something that might work.
But Parker pointed to the fact that only four Council members were present for the Saturday meeting with the Mayor and Councilmen Allen Stevens and Cabell Daniel absent. He also pointed to the fact that the earlier resolution, calling for a one year delay had passed Council unanimously earlier in the week with all members present. “I think we should stick to our original resolution,” Parker said.
Dunavant eventually withdrew his 67-child proposal, saying, “We’re divided enough.”
Ultimately, the four Councilmen present decided to stick with their original resolution asking the School Board for a year to work out another plan to the proposed merger of Halifax and Sinai into Sinai.
“We need a year,” said Councilman Dick Moore. “That’s what we asked for.”
Council said that, despite asking the school system, it had yet to receive cost-savings projections on the school changes, and continued to worry about their economic impact and the solidity of plans to put the Law and Leadership Academy in the Halifax building.
There was no overt tension between Councilmen, but plenty of feisty exchanges between the crowd of more than 20, Councilman Chuck Parker, and two speakers.
Honey Davis, a neighbor to Halifax Elementary and a realtor, said that just that afternoon she had shown a doctor, his wife and three children around the county.
Driving by the under-construction South Boston Elementary, “He was extremely pleased, as was she,” Davis said. “They were clearly extremely impressed by what was there in South Boston.”
Halifax and Sinai did not elicit much reaction.
Davis went on to say that “It makes a big, big, big difference.”
Walking into Halifax Elementary, there’s no one to greet her, she said. “We don’t see this passion,” she said.
The final remarks drew murmurs and pointed reaction.
“They’re learning!” replied Tom Pittard, a parent.
“Is school staff expected to await your arrival?” asked teacher Shelia Irby, who pointed out that teachers were there to teach the children, not to be guides for visitors. Irby earlier remarked that Sinai teachers and principal know all the kids and work hard dealing with their problems. The issue is not their color but the condition of the homes they come from. Many, she pointed out, don’t have a safe environment, don’t always get regular meals and don’t get proper rest. “I’m not against big schools,” she said, “but these students might not make it without our support.”
Parker asked if, driving by the new South Boston, Davis had pointed out its proximity to the landfill (Davis said she did), the probation and parole office where sex offenders check in and adjacent neighborhoods where drugs are a problem.#Davis said that she took the clients to her own unlocked house, just down the street from Halifax Elementary, for refreshments, thus making a point about safety.
But “New schools do make a good first impression,” she said.
Also raising hackles were remarks by Ted Bennett, a Halifax lawyer, a former state delegate and now executive director of the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center.
Bennett said supporters of Halifax Elementary ought to look at the bigger picture: the troubled economy, the dwindling population, low tax rates and onerous fiscal concerns in keeping open small schools.
Bennett said he served on a study committee several years ago to look at the schools’ dilapidated physical condition.
“The problems then were massive,” he said, and some have since been corrected.
Research shows, he said, that children’s learning is better at larger schools, where resource personnel are always present and opportunities available. If children must take bus trips to schools, “Let’s put them in a new, good school,” he said.
He also urged that ire not be directed at Stapleton, the school’s chief.
Parker countered, “I think that was somewhat of a defense of Mr. Stapleton’s leadership.”
“I am not defending Mr. Stapleton,” replied Bennett, saying no one man was making all the decisions.
Earlier comments included:
• Parent Kathy Farley, supporting a delay of one year.
• Irby, the teacher, arguing against the alternative in that “it is opening the door for Mr. Stapleton to close down schools,” she said. “When you make this offer to Mr. Stapleton, he is going to run with it.”
• Judy Chappell, who said she wanted Halifax kept open as a traditional school.
• Halifax businesswoman Carol Throckmorton, who argued that Council needs to stand by its first resolution. “A new school does not give a better education,” she said.
• Marcia Hite, a town business owner, who asked how it would look if only “a little group of elite” in-town Halifax students were dispatched to South Boston and the others kept at Sinai.
• Parent and businesswoman Missy Slate Henderson, who was adamant that she did not want her child rezoned to the new South Boston school, with the landfill, probation-parole office and Blue Ridge beverage alcohol distributor in sight.
• Pittard, the parent, who said, “There’s a whole lot of confusion.”
• Deanne Shaw, a parent and teacher, who said a second resolution would “look wishy-washy.”
•Sam Thompson, a Halifax businessman, who said the school buses would still be running through the Town of Halifax so they might as well drop off students at Halifax Elementary.
• At the meeting’s close, Davis took the floor again, saying she would not attend another public meeting.
“To be personally attacked, it was extremely upsetting,” Davis said.
Councilman Phil Hollis responded, “I don’t think anything was personal, I really don’t.”