After a summer marred by budget hardships, the Durham Public Schools Board of Education is hoping Eric Becoats will be the leader who turns the city’s school system around.
Becoats assumed the position that oversees the 53 schools that make up the Durham Public Schools system July 1. Since then, he has been on a “listening and learning” tour and met with numerous members of the community to better understand the challenges he will combat as DPS superintendent.
Thus far, Becoats said the biggest issues called to his attention have been low student achievement, poor mental health services for students, sparse art and language programs and substandard professional development of teachers. For now, though, Becoats said improving student achievement is his main concern.
“[My] goal is to make sure that in my mind we have schools of excellent achievement,” Becoats said, referring to schools that exceed their growth goals and enroll 90 percent of students at grade level or above. “Right now, our district does not have one School of Excellence, and that needs to be a goal for this district.”
Becoats said he hopes money from the “Race to the Top”—a federal grant that will provide North Carolina with about $400 million—will find its way into the school system and help him implement solutions, especially given recent budget cuts in the district. Because the state has not yet designated how it will distribute the funds, Becoats said he will continue to take a conservative approach to DPS spending.
“I think we have to look at the way we are spending our dollars and evaluate programs as to whether or not they are working or not working,” he said. “But I do think those dollars will help us to achieve results.”
Despite the looming challenges he faces, Becoats said Durham’s desire to improve is what made the district appealing to him.
“This is a school district that wanted reform and wanted to seek improvement for student outcomes, and the district has done a lot of innovative things for student learning,” he explained. “I felt that this was a district that was ready for moving to the next level and significantly improving what goes on in the schools.”
Becoats, formerly the chief administrative officer for Guilford County Schools, replaced Carl Harris, who currently serves as a deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.
Prior to working with GCS, Becoats spent time on school boards in Baltimore and Charlotte-Mecklenburg. In 2004, Becoats resigned from his position in Charlotte-Mecklenburg after being accused of taking resources from the district for his personal use. Despite these accusations, the DPS Board of Education decided he was fit for the job.
“The school board did their vetting process and I haven’t heard anyone say they were disappointed with the choice,” said Mayor Bill Bell. “I think he’s doing smart things in terms of trying to listen to members of the community and getting feedback from them.”
Bell added that he hopes Becoats will put emphasis on improving performance and graduation rates and close “the performance gap between African-American students and majority students.”
“Obviously the performance of the students in our schools and graduation rates, in particular those of African-American males, are going to be his biggest challenges,” he said. “Those corrections are not going to happen over night.”
Minnie Forte-Brown, chair of the DPS Board of Education, said she was pleased with Becoats’ first two months as superintendent.
“He has come in with an entry plan that is sensitive to the community,” she said. “He has accomplished quite a bit in two months, and he’s performed exactly the way he promised he would when he ran.”
Becoats has met with numerous Durham officials, including community elected officials, the mayor and Duke President Richard Brodhead. Forte-Brown said she has high expectations for the new superintendent.
“The improvement of DPS is necessary,” she said. “That achievement scores go up, that schools that are declared low-performing raise their scores so that they are no longer low-performing, that our whole district moves the needle.That’s what I expect to see happen this year.”
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