School-closing plan gets court approval in Bertie County, N.C.

By Lauren King
The Virginian-Pilot

ELIZABETH CITY - Usually a courtroom is divided down the aisle with a plaintiff on one side and a defendant on the other.

At a hearing Tuesday on a desegregation case against Bertie County Schools, however, the division was between the front and the back.

U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle approved a consent order that includes plans to close two, possibly three, of the best-performing elementary schools in Bertie County.

The consent order was submitted with the blessing of both the county School Board and the U.S. Department of Justice, whose lawyers had taken their spots in the front of the courtroom.

Behind them were about 40 members of Bertie Community Schools SOS - Save Our Schools . Tuesday's hearing was sparked by their submission of more than 3,300 signatures on a petition opposing the plan.

Boyle pointed out that the question before him was not whether the schools should be closed. Instead, his task was to decide whether the Department of Justice and the S chool B oard had adequately prepared a plan that would satisfy the government's requirements for desegregation.

Before ruling, however, Boyle did ask the lawyers from both sides to review the case history and asked whether the current plan was developed in a forum that allowed for public comment.

"The court isn't going to close any schools," he said. "The community's expression has to go through the democratic process."

He then said he was satisfied with the consent order and the way it was drafted.

With Boyle's approval, the School Board moves a step closer to closing the desegregation case that opened in 1967 and reignited in 2001.

In December, the Bertie County School Board voted 3-2 to forward the proposal to close J.P. Law and Askewville elementary schools and transfer about 200 children into the remaining four schools.

The proposal also said that if the board could afford to build a new elementary school, it also would close Aulander Elementary School.

The case was sparked in recent years because the schools' populations didn't reflect the racial makeup of the county's overall student population.

The student population in Bertie is 85 percent black, but at Askewville Elementary School, the white student population was at 77 percent during the 2000-01 school year, when the federal government began reviewing the county's desegregation efforts.

Comparatively, J.P. Law's white student population was 24 percent, Aulander's was 13 percent, and the three larger schools averaged a white student population of about 8 percent.

In 2002, the Justice Department asked Bertie County Schools to make a better effort to follow a 1968 desegregation order by the department and to change its "open door" student transfer policy.

Two years later, in a report prepared for the Justice Department, Bertie also was told it should consider closing the three smallest elementary schools because the smaller schools are more costly to operate per student.

Closing the two schools and moving students to the other four elementary schools would save hundreds of thousands of dollars, Seaton Fairless, chairman of the School Board, has said.

He said the School Board must be realistic about declining enrollment and that in the past four years, 200 students have left the Bertie school system. That's nearly the total student population at Askewville and J.P. Law combined.

SOS, made up of black and white residents and parents and non parents, says the issue is not about race anymore but about saving some of the best-performing schools in the county.

According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, J.P. Law and Askewville are among the top performers in Bertie County.

The courtroom defeat put frowns on the faces of the 40 SOS members in attendance.

"The court looked at the law, and the law doesn't look out for what's best for the students," said John Davis, an SOS member.

Michael Williams, another member of SOS, said that while the group's focus will change, the fight will continue. He suggested that the "save our schools" moniker should probably be changed to "strengthen our schools."

"That's the ultimate goal - to make the schools better."