Friday Report – October 21, 2016

“What kind of backyard is this?” asked Ja’Leah Whitehead, a seven-year-old Princeville resident, as she walked down partially flooded streets of Tarboro. “It’s more like a swimming pool!” She jumped over puddles and asked her older cousins, Jeremiah Sellers, 9, and Elijah Sellers, 12, for piggy-back rides.

This, because it had to be, was their Friday. Jeremiah and Elijah’s mom, Sheila Cook, knew their home was flooded when the news showed aerial footage of Princeville Elementary underwater. Cook said their apartment is within walking distance of the school. Her sons used to attend Princeville but now go to Martin Millennium Academy, which is in Tarboro and was largely unaffected by the storm.

 

North Carolina, especially the historically poor eastern region of the state, was hit by Hurricane Matthew the hardest in the country. On Saturday, Governor Pat McCrory said the state’s death toll had risen to 26. Just as the rest of the state was regaining power and withstanding minor damages, hundreds of Princeville families were displaced from their homes.

Cook says she heard of the town’s mandatory evacuation on Sunday. She packed up Jeremiah’s baby pictures and as many of the kids’ clothes as she could. She said, in the moment, she didn’t know exactly what was most important.

As an entire community waits for the water to recede, they know the town that emerges won’t be the one they left the week before. But on Friday, life for Cook was on pause in many ways. There was nothing she could do about the struggles that would remain when the water left.

As a substitute teacher in Edgecombe County Schools, Cook was out of work for the week, unclear when work will be steady again. For now, her and her children are staying with her mom in Tarboro. They will soon have to choose to rebuild their home or move away from family.

“It’s stressful,” Cook said. “I try not to let it become overwhelming.”

Schools remain closed. The gyms of both Martin Millennium Academy and Tarboro High School are set up as makeshift shelters — together serving more than 300 people. Elijah has spent hours volunteering there since last Sunday.

Patillo Middle School was surrounded by flooding, although superintendent John Farrelly said there is no damage inside the school. And flooding has nearly destroyed Princeville Elementary School. The photo below was taken by Farrelly on last Thursday from an Army National Guard boat.

 

For now, school leaders are scrambling for solutions for 220 pre-K through fifth grade Princeville Elementary students without a building, textbooks, materials, desks, or any sense of normalcy.

Edgecombe County Schools public information officer Susan Hoke said district leaders are searching for an alternate location but have to get the school board’s approval before anything is official. The school board is meeting Monday, Hoke said, to make some decisions on next steps.

“For a lot of those kids, that was their safe space,” Hoke said. “So hopefully that’s what we can provide for them in the days ahead.”

Marie Gianino, who has taught pre-K at Princeville for over 10 years, described the school as the hub of the town.

She said she just keeps imagining her classroom floating. The past and current students’ projects previously hung on walls. The chairs she and her husband refinished and painted as a project this past summer.

“I know that there’s going to be some very frightened little children,” Gianino said. “And we have to figure out what best we can do to kind of take away what Matthew has exasperated for them.”

As an early childhood educator, Gianino knows the importance of children’s social and emotional needs. Before worrying about academics, she said she first works to build a sense of security in her students, then independence, and then self-identity. Then, she said, the learning begins.

“And now, all of a sudden, we’ve kind of been caught right in the middle of that,” she said. “So we’re basically going to start all over again.”

When she was still a UNCW student, Chalmeta Evans picked up a part-time job driving buses for Brunswick County Schools (BCS). Nine years later she’s a college graduate, a Leland resident and still happily transporting the district’s students.

“I’ve been on the same route for approximately five years,” she said. “It’s a privilege to drive for students … seeing them grow up and develop, mature.”

But in recent years Evans’ has had to cover more and longer routes as the district struggles to keep up with the demand for bus drivers for its 151 routes. School districts throughout Southeastern North Carolina have long dealt with bus driver shortages, reflecting what school officials say is a national problem.

“We see it a lot in the trade magazines and I feel like everyone is fighting it,” said Gwen Ratliff, BCS’ senior transportation supervisor. “We have put notices on the cafeteria menus … we’ve put it in school news letter. We’ve actually bought a large banner we hang on an old bus, move it around county just letting people know there are part-time jobs out there.”

BCS has 12 open driver positions, about 7 percent of its fleet. New Hanover County Schools needs eight more drivers and as of Thursday Pender County Schools had two posted bus driver openings.

Those shortages demand creative problem solving. NHCS brings in substitute drivers from WAVE Transit; BCS reimburses drivers for their commercial licenses and offers bonuses for good attendance; all three districts have appealed to parents looking for part-time work to fill the gaps.

President Barack Obama speaks to students, teachers and invited guests at Benjamin Banneker Academic

High School on Monday. Photo Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta, Associated Press.

The nation’s high school graduation rate has reached a record 83.2 percent, continuing a steady increase that shows improvement across all racial and ethnic groups, according to federal data released Monday.

President Barack Obama welcomed the higher rate as good news, but the gains come against a backdrop of decreasing scores on national math and reading tests.

Education Secretary John B. King Jr. acknowledged worries about sagging achievement. “A higher graduation rate is meaningful progress, but certainly we share the concern that we have more work to do to make sure every student graduates ready for what’s next,” he said.

Obama visited Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, a magnet school in the District of Columbia, to tout the graduation rate for the 2014-2015 school year. “More African-American and Latino students are graduating than ever before,” he said.

Gains also were seen for disabled students and those from low-income families.

The District of Columbia made the most progress in the U.S. in 2014-2015 compared to the previous year, improving its graduation rate by 7 percentage points.

Obama applauded the high school for graduating all its seniors. “It’s been a while since I did math, but 100 percent is good. You can’t do better than that,” Obama told the audience, which included King, former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Mayor Muriel Bowser and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

At the same time, he also warned the students they would need more than a high school diploma to succeed in today’s job market. He said that repetitive work done in factories or offices can now be done by machine. They would need critical thinking skills.

“We live in a global economy,” Obama said. “And the best jobs are going to go to the people who are the best educated, whether in India or China, or anywhere in the world.”