|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Trustees ready to move on after vote
By MARY EVA CASSADA
Special to The News & Record
Halifax County School Board members seemed relieved and ready to
move
on to other issues after Thursday’s 6-2 vote rezoned every school
district and combined Halifax Elementary into Sinai for a single
preK-5
facility. Opponents of the plan, however, remained stunned and upset
over Trustee Joe Bailey’s surprise change of heart, even though his
expected vote would not have overturned the outcome.
The vote that also recasts Halifax Elementary as a Law and
Leadership
satellite of the crowded high school had been stridently opposed by
some in Halifax. “We needed to move on it,” said Trustee Arthur
Reynolds afterwards, who added that he did not know what vote would
result when he walked into the Mary Bethune Complex for the five-minute
meeting. “I’m glad to know the board is supporting the
superintendent.”
Opposing the plan were only Trustees Douglas Fisher, who had
declared
his opposition a week prior, and Nancylee Bagwell, who remained
undecided until the eleventh hour. “I did what I thought was best
for me,” said Bagwell. “But I can live with what the board did, too.
… I respect the board.”
Bailey said over the weekend that his change of heart resulted in
the
changes he saw in his e-mails and phone calls, which were running
easily 2:1 in favor of the rezoning and Halifax/Sinai consolidation.
The opponents of the plan were quite vocal, he said, but many
supporters were less high-profile. “A majority of my supporters …
said, ‘At first you were on the right track,’” Bailey explained,
referring to his initial acceptance of the plan before he became a
critic. “You could tell by the protest” on the Courthouse lawn, Bailey
said, that there wasn’t mass opposition. “A lot of teachers sent e-mails
stating to go ahead and combine, make a decision,” Bailey said.
Prior to the roll call vote, Bailey had made a brief statement (as did
Rister). “I would like to say that our school board, we have a tough
decision to make … over the long haul,” said Bailey. “I just want to
let everybody know we have the children first.” “If we get some
funding available … we can do something with Halifax” Elementary, he
concluded, referring to renovation of the historical structure. But
Dr. Chuck Parker, a Halifax Council member and parent who had
opposed the plan, had bitter words for his school board representative.
“You could hear the gasps in the room when he voted for it,” Parker
said. “Joe Bailey lied to everyone,” with all indications he was against
the plan, said Parker, adding: “Somebody got to him. … It’s very
disappointing he’s so easily manipulated.” “Joe Bailey said absolutely,
positively a no vote,” said a disappointed Douglas Powell, a Halifax
resident whose daughter is a Halifax teacher and grandchildren
attend Halifax and Sinai. A week before, at a separate school board work
session on the matter, Bailey had advocated keeping Halifax as a
traditional elementary.
Toward the end of the meeting, he was joined by Fisher, but
otherwise
was a lone voice among either skeptical or uncommitted colleagues.
“I don’t know that there is a next step,” said Parker. “I don’t know
that there is any recourse” for undoing the vote, but he suggested
that
there would be interest in challenging school board members for
their
seats. In November, the four-year terms of Bailey, Fisher, Bagwell,
Rister and Kelly Hill wind up, according to July Meeler, the county
voter registrar. Although some disappointed opponents suggested the
administration twisted arms to get votes, Bailey said this was not
the case.
“I don’t look to [Stapleton] for answers,” said Bailey. “He did not
put pressure on me. … He understands that we’re the boss,” Bailey
said, adding that he listens to the school system’s plans, analyzes
them and then makes up his own mind. Hill, who had agonized over her
decision until the last minute, also
said she felt absolutely no pressure. “If they had their own agenda,
they did not make it known to me,” she said Friday. “The
administration just gave me information and said, ‘I know you have a
hard choice.’” Hill toured both Halifax and Sinai last week with only a
principal present to answer questions.
The tours and her constituent response – 50 phone calls and 35
e-mails
and “conversations everywhere” – led her to lean toward approving
the
plan. At 5:30 that afternoon, Parker had staged a rally at the
Courthouse,
attracting 25-30 people for short speeches, balloons and a walk down
to
the Mary Bethune Complex, which houses the schools’ central office.
About 80 showed up for the specially called School Board meeting,
where
two sheriff’s deputies (one plainclothed) and two Halifax Town
officers
sat off to the side. At the meeting’s end, and as Bailey dismounted
the
dais into the chatty, mingling crowd, the officers moved
unobtrusively
nearer to him as he faced a few pointed but civil critics.
School Superintendent Paul Stapleton gave an interview to a
television
news crew. Meanwhile, outside, Faye Satterfield, Halifax
Elementary’s guidance counselor, accepted the fate of her school,
but said she worried about
her job. Teachers won’t lose jobs, Stapleton has assured them, but
she
noted that, in blending staffs, Sinai already has a guidance
counselor,
a P.E. teacher, a librarian and a computer lab manager, not to
mention
office staff. The new school year begins August 20 with plenty of
change: Brand-new South Boston and Cluster Springs elementaries will
open, the newly expanded middle school will welcome sixth graders
for the first time
and Halifax will merge with Sinai at the Sinai facility. Also for
the
first time, all elementaries will be synchronized on the K-5 track.