Elizabeth City's Schools Overwhelmed; Tax Increase Needed, April 16, 1919

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, April 16, 1919. The city has 2,200 children in 46 classrooms--48 students per classroom. Conditions in the African-American school were much worse. Sawyertown School has 108 students in a single classroom. And while white children are given a public high school education, Negroes were not educated past fifth grade. A state official had come to the county to evaluate the situation. His solution? Build a new high school. What about the African-American children? “The less we say about our Negro schools, the better.” 

City’s Public Schools Have Broken Down. . . Nothing Less Than a Half Million bond Issue and Higher Tax Rate Will Avert Disaster Says Educational Expert

Elizabeth City has reached a crisis in its public schools and there is only one thing to do about it. Elizabeth City may as well face the facts and prepare to spend $500,000 in new school buildings within the next two years. And instead of paying a niggardly school tax of 50 cents on the $100 valuation of property, Elizabeth City may as well prepare to pay 75 cents to $1 on the $100, based on the old valuation of property.

Elizabeth City has, in round numbers, 2,200 school children crowded into 46 inadequate class rooms, taught by 50 teachers. Elizabeth city’s public school system actually needs nearer 79 school rooms and as many teachers.

The High School Building on Road Street, built about 10 years ago, doesn’t at all answer the requirements of a modern High School and should be used only for intermediate work.

The enrollment of pupils in Elizabeth City’s public schools increases at a rate of 150 a year. That has been the rate of increase for the past 10 years. The increase may be greater during the next 10 years; hardly less. This means that Elizabeth City Schools require four ore school rooms and four more teachers every year. There isn’t a square foot of space left in the present building. In the High School Building, the basement, the auditorium stage, dressing rooms, cloak rooms, etc., have been pressed into use for class rooms. The building is not made of India rubber and can’t be stretched.

Unless Elizabeth City does something big and does it at once 150 to 200 children of school age will be turned into the streets when the schools open next fall.

That is the situation to-day. And, to make matters worse, the schools are in debt--$57,843.07, according to figures supplied this newspaper by Supt. S.L. Sheep this week.

Elizabeth City is trying to carry on its public school system with a school tax of 50 cents on the $100. That is the average for the entire state, including the sorriest rural schools. Only eight states in the union pay less taxes for support of schools. Our otherwise backward sister South Carolina pays 81 cents per $100. Tennessee pays 88 cents per $100.

Dr. L.A. Williams, an educational expert from the School of Education of the University of North Carolina spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in Elizabeth City, making a survey of the city’s schools. Mr. Williams found only what those in close touch with the situation already knew. The idea in getting him here was to add the weight of an impartial expert outside testimony to the appeals of local advocates of higher school taxes and better schools.

Dr. Williams says Elizabeth City should at once launch a half million dollar program for school betterment. To begin with there should be a bond issue of $250,000 to build a new High School Building next year. This should be followed in another 12 months with an additional quarter million dollar bond issue with which to build an elementary school for white children and a school for colored children.

Dr. Williams did not say much about the colored children. He said: “The less we say about our Negro schools, the better.” The truth of the matter is, Elizabeth City should hang its head in shame for its treatment of its Negro children. The Negro public schools of Elizabeth City are a disgrace to a civilized community.

In the colored public school of the city an enrollment of 595 children from the first to the fifth grades are packed into 10 dilapidated school rooms. None are taught beyond the fifth grade. About 200 who have gone beyond the fifth grade have been unloaded on the State Normal School. The last session of the General Assembly threatened to put an end to this near graft, but out of sympathy for the Negro permitted the practice to go on upon the condition that Elizabeth City pay the salaries of two teachers at the State Normal.

In one Negro public school in our town, the Sawyertown School, 108 colored children are taught by one teacher in one room. The teacher is Mrs. Annie E. Jones and she is a remarkable woman. With 108 small Negro children ranging from 6 to 13 years of age, this colored woman is accomplishing educational wonders, doing the work of two or three teachers and doing better work than most primary grade teachers do. There are few educators who could not learn something in methods of primary instruction from Annie Jones. After observing her work one day this week Dr. Williams said: “You’ve got to hand it to her; she knows her work.”

And so here are the conditions in Elizabeth City’s public schools to-day, facts which the public must face. Dr. Williams presented many of the facts here at a mass meeting of citizens Monday night. Only two of the city’s larger tax payers were present at the meeting. This means that the big tax payers as a rule don’t want to face the facts and are not going to take the lead in reconstructing our school system. The plain people have got to take the thing into their own hands and not wait for the leadership of the big tax payers.