Board talks improvements for Southern Wayne High School
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 23, 2016 1:46 PM
A facilities plan adopted by the Wayne County Board of Education includes a "future consideration" for a $6.1 million project to add an auxiliary gym and 16 classrooms to replace mobile units at Southern Wayne High School.
There is no money or timetable attached to the plan that now goes to Wayne County commissioners.
However, school board member Eddie Radford reminded the board during its special called session last Tuesday that some Southern Wayne parents appeared before the board about a year ago to talk about the need for an all-purpose building.
"You know our girls at Southern Wayne have no place to change for softball games, or track or whatever sport they are playing down there on the field," Radford said. "I don't know if we are in compliance with Title IX or not."
The proposed new building is part of the facilities plan as the third priority, Superintendent Dr. Michael Dunsmore said.
"But if it is, then we need to specify that that building is being considered and considered very strongly," said Radford, a former principal and wrestling coach at the school. "The wrestling team down there has operated in an old building that was built by the kids. I am a little partial to wrestling.
"These kids have a very small place to practice. They have no padding on the walls. The bathrooms down there are almost dilapidated and need to be cleaned up, and maybe they would work better. But the building they have advocated that they like would certainly work into their program down there."
Other schools some have gotten gyms or new buildings, he said.
"I know you are going to say that they (Southern Wayne) have got the diesel program going, but that is a program that they started from scratch," Radford said. "They had no help from up here. They did those themselves. So if we are going to say they have a building for the diesel academy down there, that is something they did themselves.
"We need to look at that building (parents asked for) for the Southern Wayne community."
Dunsmore said the requested multipurpose building would go to county commissioners as additional classrooms in the facility plan.
Radford asked if there was any timetable for when it would be built. There is not, Dunsmore said.
"Then it could be 20 years," Radford said.
"That is not up to us," Dunsmore said. "I am making the recommendation. At the end of the day, the commissioners are going to have to approve that allocation for funds."
But the plan is for the next five years, board member Pat Burden said.
Yes, Dunsmore said.
"So our hope would be Mr. Radford, within the next five years we would be moved in," Dunsmore said.
Board Chairman Chris West said of the school's supporters had spent some of their own money and had a nice playing field.
"Every building built down there was built by the Southern Wayne students -- field house, weight room -- every bit of it was built by students," Radford said.
West said the board had just completed the 1996 facilities plan it had inherited.
"This is the first facilities plan we have put together since that one," West said.
"I just hope that we don't move Southern Wayne down to the bottom of the pack," Radford said. "I know there are other schools out there that have needs. I understand people are ashamed of our facilities like they are. I know I am partial to Southern Wayne High School. I am partial to Goldsboro and also Aycock, but we have just got to spread it around a little bit so these kids can be proud of the school that they go to."
Board member Rick Pridgen said dressing rooms at Southern Wayne are "deplorable," as are the bathrooms.
It is an "embarrassment" when visitors and other teams come in, he said.
"It is an eyesore," he said.
Board member Arnold Flowers said he "couldn't agree more."
A look at last year's audit on maintenance cost shows that Southern Wayne, one of the county's largest schools, was second from the bottom in maintenance expenditures, he said.
"Southern Wayne is not being maintained, has not been maintained," Flowers said.
Flowers said that it had always seemed unfair to him that students who live nearly at the Sampson County line have so far to travel to Southern Wayne High School.
The only way to address that would be to be build a high school in the Grantham community, he said.
Flowers' comments drew a prompt response from Radford.
"If you put a high school somewhere in Grantham, you are going to kill Southern Wayne," Radford said. "Let me repeat that to make sure that you understand it -- you will kill Southern Wayne. When we put Spring Creek (High School), it took a lot of kids from Southern Wayne.
"So you build Grantham, you can look out for Southern Wayne, and I would hate to see Southern Wayne turn into a school, I don't want to use the word low-performing because it may not be that way, but certainly have a lot of problems that this board or whoever did it would implement into that school ourselves."
Flowers said he was going to repeat what he said because he may not have said it the way he meant it.
Flowers said he was saying he just felt it was a burden for Grantham student to have to travel so far to Southern Wayne High School -- a distance that affects after-school activities and amount of time spent on a bus.
"In regards to a high school at Grantham, I don't think a high school is on the horizon anytime in the foreseeable future," Flowers said.
Radford said he was not against a Grantham High School by any means.
"But I would hope we would keep it equal so the schools would have the same number of kids or at least a percentage of kids that will be close and can keep the school working and that they would be proportionate or equal in everything that they do," he said.
Board member Pat Burden said the board needs to take a step back because many decisions made in the early 1990s were reactive instead of proactive.
"Those decisions are impacting us today," she said. "That is why we are talking about (School) district lines. That is why we are talking about overcrowdedness. I just think that we need to be cautious and map out how the decisions we make will impact us as we move forward."