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| Phyllis Randolph, a Northside High School graduate and retired schoolteacher who once taught at the school, is fighting to keep her alma mater from closing (Photo by Wiley Henry) |
Phyllis Randolph and Michael Adrian Davis
had three minutes each to convince the Shelby County Schools board to keep
Northside High School open during a special call meeting on Tuesday night, June
21. But their passionate plea was not enough to stave off the inevitable.
Northside’s doors
will not be open for the 2016-17 school year. The board voted 5-3 to close the
school, reversing a one-year reprieve the board granted in May. Students will
be rezoned for Manassas High School, a little more than a mile away.
Board member Scott
McCormick motioned to close Northside immediately, citing a number of reasons
for reversing the board’s decision to keep the school open for a year: the transfer of all but four teachers; an enrollment of 36 students verses
190 in 2015.
“For these reasons, I asked the board to reconsider our decision to
close Northside…and to go ahead and make it effective for this year,” said McCormick,
noting that the delay of Northside’s closing had become a recruitment tool for
charter schools.
“We have to think
about the best interest of all the students,” said board member Chris Caldwell,
who asked Supt. Dorsey Hopson a hypothetical question about finding “quality”
teachers and more students should the school remain open.
Hopson said there would be serious operational
challenges, such as making sure the seniors have the course offerings and the
staff necessary to graduate. “You can have a scenario where you have a school
with less than 100 kids,” he said. “While the decision [was] to give the
community another year…it did create serious challenges.”
The superintendent said he didn’t see a credible
path in trying to staff the school, knowing the school was going to close.
Northside was one
of three schools the board voted to close during a meeting in April. Carver
High School was given the axe in June and Messick Adult Center was booted from
the district in February. The board’s decision to close the schools was based
primarily on declining enrollment.
Randolph said the
school she graduated from in 1970 could have been spared the proverbial axe
that’s being used to close “schools in the black community.” The closing of
Northside could have been adverted, she said, if vocational classes were
re-instituted.
“What happened to
all the vocational classes that Northside once had? They need to bring those
vocational classes back,” said Randolph. “Everybody is not college-bound or
college material. But that doesn’t mean students can’t be successful.”
“Northside has a lot of promise. North Memphis
has a lot of promise,” said Davis, a 1982 graduate. “The Bible talks about iron
sharpening iron. And when you take away the iron, it leaves you with rust. The
rust can be cleaned. It can be made useful again.”
Davis encouraged
the board to change its mind about closing Northside. “Once you’re in these
seats, in these kinds of meetings, it’s not really to hear what we have to
say,” he said. “Basically, it’s to tell us what you’ve already decided.”
The
handful of Northside alums in the audience gasped when board chair Teresa Jones
rendered the expected verdict. “Northside will close at the end of this school
year,” she said. Jones had asked the board for the one-year reprieve.
“I made the recommendation because the community
implored me as their representative to do so,” she said.
“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” said
Randolph. “And I don’t hear her singing.”
The closures could
save the district more than $3 million.
