Public asks commissioners to support Southern Wayne High School improvements
By Steve Herring
Published in News on August 27, 2018 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Wayne County Commissioner Joe Gurley talks with Lynn Williams, who spoke during the board's meeting last week in support of improvements at Southern Wayne High School.
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Lynn Williams of Mount Olive appeals to Wayne County commissioners Tuesday to follow through with plans for a new gym and classrooms at Southern Wayne High School.
Wayne County commissioners were at times cajoled and at other times scolded by southern Wayne County residents seeking support for a new gym and classrooms at Southern Wayne High School.
One speaker during the public comments section of the board's Tuesday meeting asked commissioners to prove they would live up to a commitment to use proceeds from a proposed sales tax for schools.
The project even received an endorsement from a resident of northern Wayne County, but only as long as it did not slow projects there.
In spring 2017, commissioners approved a $42 million bond issue that included $3.2 million for a new gym and six classrooms at Southern Wayne High School.
It is yet to be built.
Most recently commissioners eschewed a property tax increase in favor of a quarter-cent sale tax referendum on the Nov. 6 ballot.
They have promised to use the revenue for schools.
Mount Olive resident Lynn Williams said her son graduated from Southern Wayne in 2009 and her daughter in 2016.
Williams said she was part of the Boosters Club group of parents who reorganized and re-energized the club beginning in her daughter's freshman year.
"In the past five years we have put back between $30,000 and $40,000 a year to support Southern Wayne athletes and our facilities," she said. "That represents a whole lot of barbecue plates and reverse (raffle) tickets and candy.
"But we quickly realized once we got there that Southern Wayne's athletic program needed far more than hot dogs and popcorn could provide."
The gym is more than 50 years old, and with years of poor maintenance and outright neglect, not making improvements to the facilities as you go along left its mark, she said.
The restroom facilities are tiny and ancient, and the bleachers are original with no handrails, no steps, Williams said.
The school has more indoor teams than the school has space to practice, she said.
"Visiting teams don't use our facilities," she said.
Softball players kept their ballbags in a storage closet in the art room, where they also dressed for games because there are no locker room facilities for female athletes in outdoor sports, Williams said.
"They prepare for games in restrooms, classrooms, closets, their cars," she said. "That is why we began lobbying for a new gym with sufficient locker rooms and support spaces for all of the athletic programs at Southern Wayne.
"We need facilities, a school that students can be proud of and this community. We also need permanent classrooms to replace the six temporary classrooms that have been there for 30 years."
It makes sense to address all of the issues while the county is doing something since experience has proven that it might be decades before the Southern Wayne community might get another opportunity, Williams said.
"And we have been patient," she said. "We have waited as you built badly needed classrooms and new schools elsewhere in the county. We understand that.
"We recognized that you as county commissioners have pressing issues to address beyond schools. But we believe that the time has finally come to address Southern Wayne, both classrooms and the gym."
The school has challenges in facilities and academics, she said.
"We are tremendously grateful to the current Wayne County Schools administration, which has demonstrated a genuine commitment to ensuring that Southern Wayne has the resources, the support and the strong school leadership it needs to do its job effectively," Williams said.
"We have a long way to go, but it has been a deeply refreshing change. A strong Southern Wayne High School is absolutely vital to the economic well-being of southern Wayne County."
Williams said the community has seen a decline in the numbers of parents who choose to send their children to Southern Wayne.
"We have lost untold numbers of new families who have chosen to live elsewhere because they didn't want to live in Southern Wayne's district," she said.
"We are asking you to join us, to help us, to make an investment in Southern Wayne. It is a worthy investment, and it is one that is desperately needed."
Fremont Mayor Darron Flowers said he endorsed Williams' points.
"But I want to put a caveat to it," he said. "Fremont has been on the list for additional classrooms since the readjustment of priorities of the schools.
"We favor growth everywhere, but not at the expense of the Fremont program. If there is a decision made, let's make it for the benefit of all of the children of Wayne County."
Flowers said he has heard a rumor that the Southern Wayne gym was going to be at the expense of the Fremont classrooms.
"If that is the fact, then we think your priorities are in the wrong place," he said. "Classrooms should come first."
Barry Merrill had harsher words for commissioners.
"We are here to tell you from southern Wayne that we have a credibility problem," said Merrill, who publishes the Mount Olive Tribune. "You and I are asking the voters of Wayne County to support the sales tax increase, and you tell us that you need that to fund school facility needs.
"Our question is whose school facility needs will you use that money for once you get our vote and our money? If you are asking southern Wayne to vote a sales tax increase, commit to build our promised gym now and replace our temporary trailers once you get your sales tax."
He asked commissioners to provide a reason to believe that they will spend the money in southern Wayne County and not give another empty promise for 18 years that "we will get to you when we get to you."
Merrill chided the board for saying the county needs to replace mobile classrooms at Tommy's Road and Northwest elementary schools.
Those schools did not exist when the temporary mobile classrooms were added at Southern Wayne -- they are still there, he said.
Mount Olive Mayor Joe Scott sought to strike a more concillatory tone.
"What has been said here, there has been a lot of emotion this morning," he said. "For 17 to 18 years, Southern Wayne has been on a roller coaster ride. We have our hopes built up, and we have had them destroyed."
Scott said his three sons graduated from Southern Wayne where they received a great education.
He said he could have chose to send them to a private school, but choose for them to attend the school in the community where they live.
"The school there today is a good school," Scott said.
However, facilities have been an up-and-down subject for some time, he said.
Scott said he trusts commissioners, County Manager Craig Honeycutt and schools Superintendent Dr. Michael Dunsmore.
"Let's get them together, to come up with a compromise that will satisfy us and help us in the southern end of Wayne County," he said. "It is a school that covers a quarter of this county. It is a diverse school."