Along with NHCS superintendent Dr. Chris Barnes, four board members were present: Democrat Tim Merrick and Republicans Pat Bradford, Pete Wildeboer, and David Perry.
Other elected officials in the audience were City Council Member Kevin Spears and Superior Court Judge Ricardo Jensen, both Democrats.
The meeting was organized by the New Hanover County NAACP, the Wilmington Ten Foundation, and the Black Leadership Caucus to address a proposal to shutter the school and sell the property — that’s one of seven options put forward by Barnes to deal with a nearly $1-million-dollar shortfall in pre-K funding.
He has said that if the district did sell Howe, then those students would find a place either at Dorothy B. Johnson or another classroom at one of the district’s local elementary schools. The staff and teachers would find positions within the district, Barnes said. However, several educators came out to say that, logistically, this isn’t as easy as it might sound.
They mentioned the stringent standards for an NC pre-K classroom — and that exceptional children classrooms must be balanced with general preschool ones. The educators said those EC students need to have a chance to move out of that environment.
Barnes responded that those were important points, that most of Johnson pre-K rooms are already up to standard from having the Head Start grant. And that he wants to pair those rooms together — general education and exceptional children. There was some debate over the cap allowance for NC pre-K — that was either 18 or 20 students to a room.
What happened to the money?
For several years, federal Covid-relief money had supported over 100 students in six classrooms, each with a teacher and assistant. The recently approved county budget, supported by Republican commissioners Dane Scalise, Bill Rivenbark, and LeAnn Pierce, cut local funds that would have continued to support those classrooms. The budget was approved less than a day after it was first shared with commissioners, and blindsided both Democratic commissioners Rob Zapple and Stephanie Walker and the school district.
Another issue Barnes said the district will have to deal with are also the major cuts to school nurses, with 14 fewer positions supported this fiscal year, and social workers, which were also reduced.
The loss of local funds hits harder, compounded by the loss of the federal Head Start grant recently and the fact that NC pre-K only funds $496 per child for every four months (by comparison for it's $719 for private sites, based on assumption that the public schools are covering the cost of things like the operational expenses and administration).
"We are constantly working with a deficit in funding for pre-K because of the way the NC pre-K model operates," he said.
Barnes said he's also seeing a general K-12 crunch from local, state, and federal sources. He mentioned during the conversation that the district doesn't have as many students it did five years — which also decreases the amount the schools are funded. Recent data shows that student numbers are stagnating.
Legacy of Mary Washington Howe
While some of Barnes' points were about public education funding in general, Monday’s meeting was focused on Mary Washington Howe’s importance.
The school was founded in 1962 — its namesake, Mary Washington Howe, came from a prominent family of builders, political leaders, and educators. She became the first Black female principal of Williston in the late 1870s and held the position for over 20 years.
Karen Clay Beatty was a social worker in the district for over 30 years. She said the Washington family’s contributions to the community are a legacy — and when she heard about the potential to close the school:
“It really hit me in my stomach. I'm just going to be real honest with you, I felt really nauseated most of the evening, and I think a lot of it has to do with when I was in school the same thing happened with Williston. We went home for the summer, and it was done overnight, pretty much without informing the Black community or getting input from the Black community,” she said.
Beatty’s referring to the closure of Williston in the summer of 1968, a Black high school known at the time as “the greatest school under the sun” for its high levels of academic achievement. While White students from other schools could have been redistricted to Williston, allowing it to carry on that legacy, that's not what the school board chose to do at the time. Instead, as the district integrated, Williston was shuttered, scattering students around the county — a decision that left a scar on Black community.
Beatty told Barnes and the board members they needed to go to The Endowment, created from the sale proceeds of NHRMC to Novant. Worth $1.6 billion dollars, The Endowment is expected to disperse upward of $80 million annually within a few years. Barnes was previously hesitant to ask them or the county for additional money, saying the district needed to address its own problems.
Bishop Reddgo Long of the Greater Morning Star Apostolic Church spoke about how the school is rooted in the downtown Wilmington community.
“I have a little boy in my church that went to Howard pre-K, and he is doing excellent in elementary school now. He was struggling for a while, but he went to Howard pre-K, and that school means a lot, not only to our church, but it means a lot to the community. It means a lot to the teachers. Some of [them] at Howard pre-K, they live in the community, and they walk to work," he said.
One Howe teacher in the audience confirmed they did, and the audience cheered.
It's more than the name, community members say
Republican school board member David Perry was in attendance, and he suggested only preserving the name.
“If we were to get rid of the current school, I actually had the thought of maybe we could call our Board of Education Center over there on 13th Street, the Mary Washington Howe,” he said.
The audience mainly didn’t like that suggestion, including former Howe educator Sarah Bailey.
“Stay out of these communities, tearing apart something that you tore down. We build it up. Stop tearing down. You don't replace them with another Black person. You just give it a name. It'd be the Wilmington school or whatever. Leave those communities alone. Let us have our history. What you're doing, you're erasing, but you’re putting a dollar sign on it,” she said.
Wayne Moore voiced concerns that the Black community was not consulted earlier. Moore was one of the Wilmington Ten, who were wrongfully convicted in 1971 for arson and conspiracy and spent a decade in prison before being released. The Ten originally were protesting Hoggard's refusal to honor Martin Luther King Jr.
“The agenda is already in place. I’m one of the Wilmington Ten because I was having the same discussion at 17 years old in Wilmington, North Carolina. I feel like I'm in a time tug. We need to get out of it. Stop playing with us. Give us our dues,” he said.
According to Moore, “It's still deeply embedded in my soul, the idea that I wanted to cross that ramp from Williston Junior High to Williston Senior High. It's always been my opinion that the communities don't want to fund inner city kids' education. That's what it's all about. You know, just take the school up at Monkey Junction [referring to CRECC, another district preschool]. We've been bused all of our life. It's time for someone else to make a sacrifice.”
Other options from the audience
Some attendees also suggested closing College Road Early Childhood Center (CRECC instead); there are seven classrooms there compared to Howe’s ten.
Beatty reiterated this, “Go back and look at CRECC and see what you can do if you have to do some district lines or whatever you have to do. Maybe that's something you can sell and get some money.”
While the sale of CRECC was one option the audience put forth, Mary Washington Howe’s tax valuation is over $3 million, which could help accommodate the pre-K funding loss for several years. Barnes also lamented losing the $5 million federal grant from Head Start, and said if they had a healthy fund balance of say $8 million they could float the program at Howe.
The district currently has $2.2 million in savings for emergencies, including natural disasters. Dipping into this balance is another option, but Barnes didn’t want to pursue that.
A community member in the audience whose partner works at Howe asked if portions of the Howe six-plus-acre property could be sold instead of the entire school. The idea gained traction with Barnes.
“I don't want you guys to get the impression that this is a money grab or I'm after something. I have been trying all year to maximize our resources for our kids. That's why I gave them seven choices, and now I have eight, but we need to do a better job of listening, but I do hope you guys understand that we are facing funding challenges that I'm trying to keep, I don't want to say keep the lights on, but maximize things that serve kids, and I know that that's not always easy decision,” he said.
These were some of Barnes’ parting remarks to the group – addressing the evening’s concerns, and maintaining they had to make tough decisions ahead – so that they could find the money to still offer those classrooms this fall. They emphasized a final decision was not already made.
One of Barnes’ original seven options was to redirect $540,000 in carry-over funding from the district’s 21 Title One schools, which are schools where there are high populations of students on free and reduced lunch. This money wasn’t technically promised to the schools — but administrators were informed there would be a chance to access a portion of the total carry-over funds.
It’s about the bigger historical picture for the community
Toward the close of the meeting, former UNCW professor Dr. Deborah Brunson maintained, like Moore, that the community needed to be better informed about local history.
“I'm not a Wilmingtonian, but I took it upon myself to learn some stuff, and there's a lot of bad stuff. If you're truly interested in getting everybody in this community involved, you need to sit down and take a few history lessons and have some lunch conversations with people and understand when you come and talk about numbers and placements, and ‘No’. It's got to be more than that. You got to think deeper than that,” she said.
Angela Henry worked at Howe her entire educational career, starting in 1991. Howe started as an elementary school in 1962 and it eventually became a preschool in the late 1990s.
For her the school meant, “It's not always about the A's, the B's, the reading, but once you nurture them in that spirit. Once you give them that nurturing and offer them that diversity, and how things are good, and things can be good in life, they will.”
Henry, too, addressed the open historical wounds that are still with them.
“Wilmington, itself, has so many blemishes that have never been healed. And it kind of scratched the surface, but the infection is still there. And so when we hear of closures of institutions, and I call Howe an institution, is almost like it kind of peels back a certain type of a layer, and I think that's what was really, really hard,” she said.
Other community leaders spoke during the event, highlighting the importance of keeping the school: Sonya Bennetone Patrick, Kemeka Sidbury, NHC NAACPS's Education Chair, and Patricia Waddell, who was a former principal at Howe.
LeRon Montgomery is the president of the New Hanover County NAACP chapter. He organized the public meeting — and finished by noting some of those community wounds.
“I'll just implore you, as you look at the audience, you can go back to 1898. We have somebody here from the Wilmington Ten. But you know, you preserve New Hanover [High] with no problem. But when it comes to Howe, that's one option to get rid of it. Think about how that looks towards the community when you're making those decisions. We don't want to repeat history again. I wish I could have went to Williston. Williston basically a university here in New Hanover County,” he said.
Community members said they were appreciative that Barnes and the board members came to listen to their concerns. Montgomery told the audience they can sign up to speak at the school board meeting next week — when a decision on Mary Washington Howe, and the pre-K funding issue in general, is expected.
Editor's note: With four school board members present and discussing public business, it the board technically had a quorum, and appears to have run afoul of open meetings law by not noticing the meeting or taking minutes. WHQR reached out to Board Chair Melissa Mason on the issue and has yet to hear back.
