Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for November 12, 2008 SAVE OUR SCHOOL

A sad story...

An eerily familiar story...school integration in 1969 (Cairo was 1968)...white flight...steady decline of programs and facilities (although Cairo DID build/open a new high school in 1980)...failed referendums...the dire warnings of negative impact on students and the community if the high school is closed and the students dispersed to surrounding high schools...

(Oops...got carried away there...strike that last phrase. In Cairo, we have NOT had a "public discussion" on closing the high school...no opportunity for the public to express concern about the impact on students and/or the community of closing the high school. THAT "decision" was aired by Cairo Superintendent of Schools Dr. Leotis D. Swopes at a Meridian Board of Education meeting...NOT a Cairo Board of Education meeting. Another one of those "things that make you go 'hmmm...'")

Seems that the only "little difference" between Cairo and the district reported on below is that in Ville Platte, LA, school officials are trying to SAVE their high school...

As they say..."Viva la Difference!"

Louisiana School Could Be Facing a Last Hurrah

By JERÉ LONGMAN

VILLE PLATTE, La. — Late Friday afternoon, ankles taped, uniforms on, the Ville Platte High School Bulldogs boarded their team buses and drove into the sunset of a season, fearing that nightfall would soon come for the entire school.

“I’m full of emotions, but I don’t know what to feel,” Henry Alfred, a junior linebacker, said, knowing he might be playing his team’s final football game of this or any future season. “I want to give it all I got, but I don’t know if I want to cry or be mad.”

This tiny, rural town in Cajun country is struggling again to find its racial equilibrium. A 43-year-old desegregation case remained unresolved on Nov. 4 as voters narrowly rejected a property tax increase to build a new Ville Platte High, which has faced decades of neglect since white flight accompanied integration in 1969.

It was the third “no” vote on a bond proposal in little more than a year. Now the predominantly black school of 400 students faces closure next May at the urging of the United States Justice Department, which has called Ville Platte High’s deficient academic programs and deteriorated facilities a vestige of past discrimination.

A hearing on the school’s fate is scheduled for Dec. 15 before the federal judge overseeing the case. If Ville Platte High ceases to exist, officials said, this town of 8,316 would be the only county seat in Louisiana’s 64 parishes without a public high school. Students would be dispersed to one or more of the other three high schools in Evangeline Parish. But no Bulldog wants to be a Mamou Green Demon or a Pine Prairie Panther or a Basile Bearcat next season. Some said they might simply give up football.

“It would be some hard thinking,” said Chris Frank, a sophomore fullback. “I couldn’t see myself in no other jersey.”

He and his teammates may not have a choice.

Last March, the Justice Department dismissed as abysmal the Evangeline Parish school board’s efforts to improve the 70-year-old brick structure and academic performance at Ville Platte High. The school is considered a failure under the No Child Left Behind Act and has been labeled academically unacceptable by the state.

In a court filing, the federal government pointed to “makeshift library shelves,” chain locks on doors “so warped that they would not close,” and concern that exterior walls of one classroom “will begin to collapse soon.”

The school’s athletic facilities are run-down. The visitors’ grandstand at the football field has a wide crack along its brick facade, and the classrooms beneath the bleachers are no longer considered safe. The boys’ basketball team has been a recent state power, but the court is not of regulation size, so the gym cannot be used for playoff games.

The Bulldogs finished second at the 2006 state track meet, a remarkable achievement considering that their track’s rubberized surface has long worn away, leaving an abandoned oval of grass and cracked asphalt. If a light needs replacing at the football field, Coach Roy Serie said, “You’re talking two years.”

School officials, black and white, agree that Ville Platte High needs a new home or at least an extreme makeover. But Toni Hamlin, the Evangeline Parish schools superintendent since 2007, disputes the Justice Department’s sharp rebuke. She said that all renovations mandated in a 2004 federal school reorganization plan had been completed. Some $2.7 million in repairs have been made, including a new metal roof, library improvements, a new science lab and an upgraded computer lab.

The school board is committed to continued academic and facility improvements in an attempt to keep the high school open, she said.

“All small towns are struggling for their survival,” said Hamlin, who is white. “It’s the high school that should be the hub of that community.”

Peggy Edwards, the principal at Ville Platte High and an alumna, said she worried that some students might drop out instead of transferring. Some might face traveling 30 miles each way to school, and could be discouraged from participating in extracurricular activities, she said. What industry would come to a place with no public high school, she wondered. “I see a perishing city,” Edwards said.

The bonhomie of Cajun country is evident in Ville Platte’s restaurants and stores. The city calls itself the swamp pop music and smoked meat capital of the world. It is also renowned for its squirrel hunting. The first weekend of each October, football is pushed to Thursday night, schools close on Friday and fathers and sons head into the woods for some 12-gauge bonding.

Yearly, Ville Platte High and the predominantly white Catholic school in town, Sacred Heart, play each other in the Tee Cotton Bowl, started as a unifying civic gesture in 2000. Yet, the city, which is about 60 percent black and 40 percent white, seems hopelessly divided about building a new high school.

“We’ve got good people in Ville Platte,” said Gervis Lafleur, a school board member who is black. “If you had told me a year ago that they would vote down a new school three times, I never would have believed it.”

Since October 2007, bond proposals were scaled down to $17 million from $28.5 million. Yet all three failed. The margin last July was 115 votes. Last week, the gap widened to 260 votes. That makes a half-dozen ballot rejections since the early 1980s.

Voters have given a number of reasons. A sales tax would be more equitably shared than a property tax. The school is too low-performing to rescue. Any new taxes would be considered excessive in an economic downturn, especially in Evangeline Parish, one of the state’s poorest, where the median household income was less than $23,000 last year.

Several people said they danced around the issue of race, wanting not to believe it had influenced the failed votes, unable to convince themselves otherwise.

“I think a lot of our people in the white community feel it is unfair that they have to pay for a school their children do not attend,” Lafleur, the school board member, said. “But this is a public school. It’s for everyone. When you fail your children, you fail.”

Black voters also bear some responsibility for not turning out in greater numbers, said Serie, the football coach, who is black. “If we had just gone in and pressed a button, we wouldn’t be having this problem,” he said.

This season, the Bulldogs played resolute football in uncertain circumstances, though they lost five of their first eight games and had another one canceled by Hurricane Gustav. For Friday’s finale, the team traveled to neighboring St. Landry Parish to face Port Barre High, a league rival and the fifth-ranked team in Class 2A.

“We want to be optimistic, but face it, this could be our last one,” Serie told his players. “Let’s show Ville Platte, and Evangeline Parish, what kind of team they’re trying to tamper with.”

Ville Platte fell behind, 7-0, but rallied as the team’s top player, the senior receiver Rarlensee Nelson, caught two touchdown passes, giving the Bulldogs a 15-7 lead in the second quarter.

“Save our school!” the band and the cheerleaders chanted. “Save our school!”

By late in the fourth quarter, Ville Platte trailed again, 16-15. But the Bulldogs dug in, stopping Port Barre an inch from a first down at Ville Platte’s 22. With 1 minute 29 seconds left, Nelson kicked the first field goal of his career, a 25-yarder, putting the Bulldogs ahead, 18-16. Playing defensive back, Nelson then batted away a pass on the game’s final play, giving his school a victory in perhaps its final game.

He pumped his arm in celebration but later said he also felt sad.

“There’s not going to be a school to come back to,” Nelson said. “No friends to come back and see.”

At the final whistle, Eradley Ben, a senior defensive back, let out a plaintive scream. “Why close our school?” he yelled. “Why?”