Jeff Bryant reports here on the inspiring example of a so-called “failing school” in North Carolina that not only succeeded in blocking a state takeover, but then heightened community collaboration to turn the school into a community school.
North Carolina passed a state takeover plan based on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. The state listed several schools that were targets for takeover and charterization. Community outrage slowed the state’s plan, and only one school was taken over.
This is the success story of one that got away from the clutches of the state and the privatizers.
Bryant writes:
As soon as Anna Grant’s busy workday at Forest View Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, ended, she would head toward the next school where she was needed. “I would get off work and immediately drive to meetings, press events, whatever we had organized [for the school],” she recalls.
Her second school of concern was Lakewood Elementary, where Grant now works. In 2017, Lakewood was a flashpoint of grassroots protest due to a threat by the state to take over the school.
“Roughly 200 protesters, parents and neighborhood residents” rallied at Lakewood Elementary to keep the school out of the state’s new Innovative School District (ISD), reported NC Policy Watch, a media project of the North Carolina Justice Center. The ISD was created by the state legislature to take over low-performing schools and transfer governance from the local school board to charter school management companies. Lakewood, along with Glenn Elementary in Durham and three other schools in the state, was on the shortlist of schools at risk of being transferred into the ISD.
“It’s a takeover,” NC Policy Watch quoted Bryan Proffitt, then-president of the Durham Association of Educators. “I don’t intend to allow a terrible legislative idea to ruin our neighborhood school,” Durham school board member Matt Sears told a reporter for the Herald-Sun.
Durham school system doesn’t fall into the traditional media narrative of schools as places with heroic individuals but rather as institutions with systems and problem-solving processes.
Grant now calls the protests “a community effort” that united teachers with parents, community activists, and the Durham school board in an effort to stave off a transfer of school governance from the community to a private organization. The activists formed the group Defend Durham Schools to share research and talking points on state takeovers and started a Facebook page to recruit more community support.
“Our zoned school was Lakewood,” recalls Durham parent and current school board member Jovonia Lewis, “and when the state threatened to take over the school using the ISD, I joined a committee that was raising the alarm.”
The resistance was successful, as state officials dropped the Durham schools from their list of takeover targets and eventually took over only one school in Robeson County. But today Lakewood remains a much-talked-about school not for resisting the state takeover but for what happened after.
Keep reading to learn how parents and the community saved their school
and improved it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks Diane!
Thanks for this post. Community engagement is a way to stop the steal of our public schools. Top down takeovers have repeatedly failed to produce positive results. All communities should be on alert for potential takeovers. In many states the policymakers work for the charter lobby, and they are rigging the laws against public schools. Activism and resistance are important in such a climate.
Community and parent outreach are key in beating back hostile takeovers, The privatizers do not want the negative publicity so the more embarrassing noise the stakeholders make the better. Privatizers are counting on little resistance to their plans. They would prefer to transfer public funds to private pockets without a lot bad publicity. They prefer to operate behind the scenes behind the shroud of dark money. If communities fail to defend their public schools, they must realize they could lose them.
“Another problem the model faces is that it doesn’t fall into the traditional media narrative of schools as places with heroic individuals—the one great teacher or the hard-charging principal—but rather as institutions with systems and problem-solving processes.”–From the article.
This is because the perception that there are heroic teachers is as fraught with illogic as the notion of anyone as heroic. Most heroes are not that heroic. They are generally the product of their social interactions. Sure there are people who are exemplars. The people who became involved in helping this school are among them. But heroes are generally not self-styled, and are often not very well known until they are gone.
Roddie Edmonds faced down a Nazi when he refused to give up American Jews who had been taken prisoner. Hero in my book. Marc Bloch, my favorite historian, suffered under the Nazis as a part of the French resistance and was executed just days before the Allied overran the area. He did not have to stay in France, being Jewish, he had every reason to stay in England after he was evacuated from Dunkirk. Hero as well. Both men, however, were heroic within a realm of civilization that already valued human life. This was a value they were taught by a society that defined what we call civilization.
There are great teachers and great students. But I have never been comfortable being the one to say who the great students are. Nor do I like being considered heroic because of something I did in class. The super teacher model of educational excellence belittles the teacher in the trenches. We all work together to advance the value of civilization.
nicely understood: “This is because the perception that there are heroic teachers is as fraught with illogic as the notion of anyone as heroic…The super model of educational education excellence belittle the teacher in the trenches.”
Do you know, Roy, the magnificent story “A Mystery of Heroism,” by Stephen Crane? It makes precisely this point.
thanks, Bob. Not heard of that one. I also thought of O’brien’s “The Things They Carried.”
O’Brien’s book is a fine read.
found that story and read it. Great story. Already told our English teachers. You are good, Bob. You ought to go into writing textbooks.
LOL. You know, of course, Roy, that I spent 25 years writing literature, speech, grammar and composition, and other textbooks, right?
That was the joke. Yes, I knew your story.
I figured it was, Roy! Love to you and yours!
Providence RI is going through a state takeover where the Chiefs for Change commissioner hired a Fl superintendent with a checkered past and he lost his job today (was told to resign) because he hired another chum from Florida doing toe popping to a boy …and this is the same guy who had an assault charge from his time in Hillsborough County with toe popping 5 boys..The union is asking for the state take over to end but RI being RI …it won’t happen!
https://www.golocalprov.com/news/Providence-Superintendent-Peters-Leaving-Post-After-Controversy
Thanks for the post-
Infante-Green- Raimondo’s pick, praised by Gates’ John B. King – an article at The 74 attempted to paint her with a Kamala Harris brush, “R.I.’s Top Female Leaders”.
Hoping Infante-Green’s days in Raimondo’s Wall Street colony are numbered. It’s bad for Biden to have Gina as part of his administration.
Gina Raimondo was a hedge funder before she was RI Governor. She and her husband (ex-TFA, now banker) are privatizers. She hired Infante-Green TFA) to break the Union and increase charters. Infante-Green is already a member of Jeb Bush’ Chiefs for Change.
Got an F on a paper high school. Teacher said I needed cetaceans in the body of the text and a list of cetaceans at the end. Had to look that up. I guess he was downright crazy bout whales.
Or maybe this was just a fluke.
My school may be in this position soon. Thank you for the ideas to hopefully help save it.