Durham Technical Community College President Phail Wynn and I co-chair "5 Yes! For Durham's Future," the citizens group advocating for the $74.4 million Durham County bond package on the Nov. 6 ballot. The bonds include new or renovated facilities for the Durham County Library, Durham Public Schools, Emergency Medical Services, the Museum of Life & Science and a new Senior Center.
The largest portion, $51.6 million for Durham Public Schools, includes four partner schools--Durham School of the Arts, Rogers-Herr Middle School, Lakewood and George Watts Elementary Schools--in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative. These schools, in which hundreds of Duke students, faculty, staff and retirees tutor and provide other support, will receive more than $19 million in much-needed capital improvements.
Many people, myself included, are concerned by the inability of our school board to rise above apparent racial divisions. This was brought to a fever-pitch level last year when the principal of Hillside High School was removed, an action which led to public threats by some of his supporters who threatened to send a political message to the schools' leadership by defeating school bonds.
The arguments of those opposed to the bonds have revolved around two issues. The first is that the schools have not made progress in addressing the needs of our community's children, particularly our black children.
While our schools can and must do better, as the excellent ABC test results (where 29 of the 44 Durham Public Schools achieved their highest scores ever) remind us, it is incorrect to state that black students in our public schools are not making significant progress. Here are the facts. Since 1997, we have seen:
*12.4 percentage-point increase in the number of blacks in grades 3 through 8 reading at or above grade level.
*16.8 percent increase among black third graders reading at or above grade level.
*37 percent decrease in the year 2000-2001 of black students leaving school before graduation.
*28.6 percent gap between white and black students in grades 3 through 8 reading at or above grade level, compared to 37.2 percent in 1997.
*Reading achievement levels among black children have increased at a rate more than three times that of white students.
*24 percent increase in the number of black students taking the SAT.
*43 percent increase in the number of black students in academically and/or intellectually gifted programs.
The majority of the dollars in the school bond package will go to urban schools, and some 60 percent of the children in these schools are African- American. Penalizing students and teachers who are working so hard to improve the achievement of our community's children should be unacceptable to any fair-minded person who looks at the data.
Over the past decade capital investments have been made in our urban schools in an amount greater than this bond package. It's not surprising that more than 63 percent of 1,200 Durham voters in a recent survey, with an even greater percentage of blacks, said they will vote for the school bonds.
Opponents argue the process to select schools in the bond package was without broad community input. School board vice-chair Mozell Robinson told me the school board held forums in which community input was invited on the school bonds issue, but with scant attendance. The school board informally submitted a $70+ million schools bond proposal to the county. The county commissioners, wanting to preserve the county's AAA bond rating, which keeps all county borrowing as low as possible, determined that this bond package would be for $51.8 million for the schools.
Three future bond referenda are planned over this decade to address other priority school and community needs. While many votes of the school board are along a 4-3 racial line, after receiving the instruction from the county, the school board unanimously decided which schools to include in the Nov. 6 bonds.
Financial experts report that with the drop in interest rates, there couldn't be a better time for municipalities to borrow to support capital projects to meet community needs.
When the bonds pass, the most a person with a home assessed at $150,000 would pay is $37.50 a year; that assumes no growth in county revenues or use of any other funds to pay back the bonds. Any way one looks at it, this investment in support of our community's children, our senior citizens, our public libraries, the Museum of Life & Science and EMS, is a bargain.
All but one of the political action committees in Durham have endorsed the bonds, as have both candidates for mayor and some 15 other citizens groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, Durham Public Education Network and Walltown Neighborhood Ministries.
The Herald-Sun, The News & Observer and The Independent have editorialized in favor of the bonds.
I urge everyone at Duke to vote Nov. 6, and especially to support the five bonds. When our children and their teachers are working hard and achieving real progress, our community must show we support them. Vote 5 Yes! For Durham's Future on the Nov. 6 ballot.
John Burness is the senior vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke University.
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