News-Record.com

The Council of the Great City Schools criticized the Bush Administration last month for its contradictory position on school race issues: that the federal No Child Left Behind law should work to eliminate achievement gaps between white and minority students but at the same time the government has no compelling interest to stop re-segregation.

The organization also filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing schools should be able to use race as a factor in public school assignment.

We'd like to document more of the history of Eastern and of the fire itself. Please leave your memories here. If you have old or new photos, e-mail them to photo@news-record.com. We also may print some of your responses in the Rock Creek Record.

What do you think of the Board of Education's decision to send Eastern High students to GTCC East and the former School for the Deaf? Superintendent Terry Grier and Eastern Principal Lisa Cooke said they thought those locations were the best ways to keep students together.

Also under consideration were the old Gibsonville high school, Eastern's vocational building and Northern Middle.

Find here a list of school supplies you can donate to benefit Eastern High students. You can donate them at the Guilford County Schools administative office on 712 N. Eugene St.

Students at Eastern Guilford High will lose part of their vacations to make up days lost since fire destroyed their school last week.

The plan approved tonight by the school board also affects teacher work days:

*Nov. 22 (work day) Part of Thanksgiving vacation.
*Dec. 21 (vacation day)Part of winter break.
*Jan. 2 (work day)Part of winter break.
*Feb. 26 (work day)
*April 2-3 (vacation days)Part of spring break.

Juniors and seniors have to make up three days. They resumed classes Wednesday at GTCC East - a week after the fire. Sophomores and freshmen have six days to make up. They're expected to return to class Tuesday at the former Central N.C. School for the Deaf in Browns Summit.

UPDATE: Late last night the board voted to extend the superintendent's contract by one year, to 2010. (There's some discussion about this in the strand before this one.)Last month they gave him a raise. In previous years, they've done the raise and contract extensions at the same time.
I'm sorry, but I wasn't able to get this in time for today's paper.

Here's a strand dedicated to last week's election. Accountant and businessman Garth Hebert easily won the seat from over Debbie Maines, president of the Guilford County Council of PTAs.

This was the first change in representation for that district in more than a decade.

Sorry this is so tardy. We've been somewhat swamped with covering the Eastern High School fire. In fact, we're working on that again today.

Charlotte represented the Tar Heel state on NAEP's report on science released today.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP or the Nation's Report Card, is probably best known for comparing states in reading and math using a standardized test that is given to a sampling of students, typically fourth- and eighth-graders.

But NAEP also tackles science, since 1996 in fact, long before the federal No Child Left Behind Act required states to start testing the subject. Beginning in 2007, NCLB requires states to test students in science at least once in each of three grade spans (3-5, 6-9, 10-12) every year.

This report looks at how 10 large, urban districts across the nation fared in NAEP's 2005 science assessment.

Page and High Point Central high schools have both received the Hubert B. Humphrey Jr. School Improvement Award, receiving $5,000 each for professional development.

The award highlights and rewards innovative high schools that improve student achievement through sound educational practices, community outreach and collaborative relationships.

The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation endowed an annual award at the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro honoring the late senior partner of the Greensboro law firm of Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard who served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation from 1981 until his death in 2003.

Update: A list of criteria the foundation used to select the winners. I don't yet have the actual numbers on how Page and HPC compared to other schools.

There will, however, be a special meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 28.

What do you guys think?

Forty-four percent of North Carolinians feel that public education has gotten off on the wrong track, according to a poll
conducted last week by the non-partison Elon University Institute for Politics and Public Affairs. Forty-three percent said they felt that public education in the state is going in the right direction; 14 percent said they did not know.

The institute surveyed 533 North Carolina residents. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percent.

At least 100 parents are expected to attend a community meeting Sunday at Calvary Baptist Church in McLeansville to discuss concerns about the temporary locations of Eastern Guilford teachers and faculty.

Also on the agenda is pushing the Board of Education to move students into the old Lucent building in McLeansville. Read more about the story in today's paper.

Gov. Mike Easley released this week results of a review to improve school safety he requested in October. You can find the report here.

In essence, state officials found that school resource officers have helped keep crime down in schools. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said in a press release "putting more officers in schools and ramping up training for teachers and law enforcement are key steps toward keeping our kids safe."

This appears to go against the wish by some members of the Guilford County Board of Education to remove SROs from middle schools.

The school safety review also recommends that all school districts have school safety plans in place and new legislation be drafted to require regular drills and exercises to prepare for school shootings, chemical explosions, terrorism and other threats (GCS has both an emergency closing policy and school safety plan).

David Helberg was the first principal at Sternberger Elementary when it opened in 1949 (at Lindley Elementary, before moving to the new building in January of 1950). In March, the Kiwanis (he was a long-time member of the group) and school system named Sternberger's library after Helberg.

Helberg, 89, passed away Monday morning.

Eastern students will be reunited, but not until next school year.

The school board voted 9-2 Tuesday night to create a "village" of portable classrooms at Eastern for the next two years until a new school can be built. A fire Nov. 1 destroyed the Gibsonville school and students have been split up at two sites: GTCC's East Wendover campus and the Millennial Campus in Browns Summit (a joint research facility for UNCG and A&T).

Students will remain at the temporary sites this year. A group of Eastern parents had lobbied the board to lease or buy the old Lucent building to get students together again as early as next semester.

It's still unknown whether all of Eastern's students will be in the mobile classrooms. The board asked district officials to explore options that included putting freshmen at either Eastern Middle or the old Gibsonville Elementary or keeping them with their classmates.

For those of you who weren't at Tuesday's meeting, following is an explanation of the options the school board had to consider in locating students after this school year and rebuilding Eastern Guilford High:

1. The board approved the request of $1.7 million in state lottery funds to help pay for $8.9 million in remediation work at Eastern, Kernodle and Hairston middle schools. That would free up local capital funds to help with Eastern or other projects. County Commissioners could approve this request Dec. 14.

2. The board hired Alex N. Sill Co. to negotiate an insurance settlement with the Department of Public Instruction. School attorney Jill Wilson said she expected Sill's fee to be no more than $200,000.

3. The board decided to create a village of modular units at the Eastern Guilford site on Peeden Drive. The arrangement could cost between $2.7 million and $3.1 million, depending on which grades are placed on the site. Freshmen could end up at Eastern Guilford Middle or the old Gibsonville Elementary. These estimates include setting up and relocating the existing 10 mobile classrooms on the property.

The board decided the Carolina Corporate Center was too expensive a route. The district estimated it would cost $50 per square foot to renovate and $5.58 to lease $150,000 square feet in the building. This would put the lease cost for two years at $9.2 million. Using Fidelity Realty Investments' estimate of $20 per square foot to renovate the space would amount to $4.7 million.

Hill said the $50 per square foot renovating cost was based on needing to bring the nearly 40-year-old building up to code: installing a new fire alarm system, rerouting the sprinkler system, moving and adding electrical wiring, improving the heating and air conditioning system, adding bathrooms and science labs, etc.

The board did not spend too much time considering placing Eastern students at other high schools or keeping them at the Browns Summit and GTCC sites (GTCC has not yet offered to give them a second year on the Greensboro campus).

4. Last, the board voted to build Eastern using $10 million in available state insurance funds and a $41 million certificate of participation from the county (which commissioners must approve).

The board could have increased the loan amount to $127.3 million, which would have covered either rebuilding Eastern and work at Jamestown Middle, Ragsdale High or rebuilding Eastern and purchasing the Carolina Corporate Center. The district would have needed an additional $7 million to fund the second approach.

Alan Duncan and Garth Hebert (not yet sworn in) said they didn't want to tie up lottery funds on either Eastern or the extra projects. Other board members said they didn't want to wait for a bond vote to commit to rebuilding Eastern.

We'll see what ends up on the project list for a bond referendum. They will likely talk about it next Tuesday.

The American Legislative Exchange Council released this week a "Report Card on American Education" covering the years 1983-84 to 2004-05. The organization argues for more choice in public school selection and less emphasis on districts spending money to improve student achievement.

A few statistics about North Carolina (2005):
* Ranked 16 in the United States and above the national average for NAEP fourth and eighth-grade math scores.
* Ranked 36 for eighth-grade reading scores and below the national average; 32 for fourth-grade reading scores and at the national average.
* Spent $7,222 per student, compared to $9,052 nationwide. The state ranked 42.
* Received 9.6 percent of its budget from the federal government.

City police recovered a rifle and pipe bomb materials from the home of a Grimsley High School student who, along with a friend, admitted to detectives they talked about hurting classmates. Continue reading the story here.

In two other, unrelated incidents, an Andrews High student was charged Tuesday with carrying a BB gun to school and a Page High student was charged Tuesday night with carrying a .22-caliber handgun to a Northeast High basketball game.