NORTH CAROLINA--The head of the state NAACP says local school leaders are "out of control."
The Rev. William J. Barber III blasted the Burke County Board of Education while speaking to nearly 200 people at the Morganton Community House during the 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. banquet on Saturday.
His remarks came just days after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on School Accreditation and Improvement announced it would strip Burke County's high schools of accreditation on June 30 unless SACS CASI sees major changes in the board of education's activities and behavior.
"School boards across this country and in this state are going backwards," Barber said. "Wake County is fighting with accreditation. You all up here in Burke County have seen that… They have given you until June to get it together."
He questioned the rationale of any local board that would defy recommendations by the council that accredits 13,000 schools and school districts in the southeastern United States and abroad.
"Why would you be fighting an international accreditation in a global economy?" he said. "That isn't just going to hurt black children; it's going to hurt all children."
"The school board is out of control," Barber concluded. "Electing folk who are living in the politics of the past instead of the politics of the day and tying the hands of superintendents who want to do right and then joining the hands of superintendents that don't want to do right. It's wrong all over."
After the meeting, Barber told The News Herald that Burke County school board members are not putting the children first.
"That ought to be their focus. That ought to be what they spend their time doing," he said.
"We should not try to keep folks from saying things at meetings and bickering among each other and have all kind of strange e-mails that undermine things like accreditation, which is incredibly important for your students that are graduating from here, not just black students but for all students."
Barber said Burke County residents could turn to the ballot box if the board does not amend its ways.
"The community has the power to vote, so folks that are not focused the simple thing — high quality, constitutional, well-funded, public education for every child — then you ought to ask them to sit down and put some more people in those seats," he said.
Parents should be furious with the school board for losing accreditation, according to Barber.
"People should be in an uproar to even have to be put in a suspension in June," he said. "Accreditation is important. These are children's lives. You might be training a child in this school system that has the answer to cancer, or the answer to HIV/AIDS. We don't know what potential they have.
"The school board should not be Republican. They should not be dealing with conservative ideology. It's not about being Democrat. It's about high-quality, constitutional, well-funded, diverse public education for every child. That is what they ought to be working for. Anything else is a waste of time."
The Rev. Barber has been a leading critic of the Wake County Board of Education in which a board majority is trying to end a decades-old busing policy.
As in Burke County, Wake County citizens criticized some Wake County board members for meeting in secret, for not communicating with the stakeholders, for stifling public comment and for other possible violations of AdvancED’s standards for leadership and governance.
After AdvancED decided to investigate the complaints, the Wake County Board of Education considered dropping accreditation altogether, but, after a two-hour-long closed meeting on Wednesday, voted to send a letter demanding that AdvancED allow attorneys to accompany people interviewed by the accreditation commission’s review team.
AdvancedED, the parent association of SACS CASI, rejected the school board’s demands, saying it would not alter the long-standing policies and procedures that apply to all other schools its accredits.
AdvancED said it would drop the Wake County schools’ accreditation unless the board of education cooperates with the work of the special review team.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Tuesday, January 18th 2011 at 2:20PM
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