School closing a sign of things to come?

The closing of any school is a sad occasion. Such is the case in the demise of Fair Bluff Elementary School.

Forty years ago, the school had more than 500 students. At the start of the coming school year, projections showed that it would have fewer than the minimum 100 required by the state. The school had seven teachers, some of whom were required to teach multiple grades.

Residents made impassioned pleas to the school board to keep Fair Bluff Elementary open, but it was for naught.

Closing the school was all but inevitable. The downward trend was clear.

School choice through No Child Left Behind and the opening of the Columbus Charter School this year sealed the school’s fate. The school’s Cracker Jack principal, Dr. Jennifer Smith, resigned earlier this summer to take a job in Charlotte. Test scores were again among the lowest in the state despite Smith’s and the staff’s efforts.
If other communities want to prevent what happened in Fair Bluff, what can be done?

In the final analysis, parental involvement is the key. Show us a school with high parental involvement, and we’ll show you a successful school. Principal Smith made efforts to increase participation by parents, but to no appreciable avail.

This is where a program like Communities in Schools, which is in place with the city school system, might prove beneficial.

Then there’s the issue of transfers out of Fair Bluff Elementary even before school choice. It’s a moot point now, but transfers to Evergreen and Cerro Gordo are part of the reason for the school’s failure.

But who can blame parents for seeking better opportunities for their children when their own school is sinking? Obviously, mass transfers or transfer requests are a red flag signaling that changes must be made.
We continue to worry about the long-term fate of our public schools. Educating children in areas where the poverty, drug use and illiteracy rates are high is a monumental challenge.

Parental involvement is such a key component, but reality tells us that this is usually commensurate with the poverty rate.

Funding for pre-K programs, efforts to lower class sizes and initiatives to pay wages that would entice motivated professionals to enter the teaching field would help. Dedicated teachers and administrators make a difference.

It’s projected that the cost of the dubious war in Iraq will total more than $1 trillion. What if even half of that went for education here at home?

Education gets a lot of lip service, but when real resources are dedicated to education, it’s been shown time and time again that it doesn’t matter if the students are rich or poor, they can learn.

Yet, another school bites the dust. We wonder if more will follow.