“We were singing from different hymn books,” Marshall said. “He was working off another page.” Carver High School is situated in a predominantly African-American neighborhood of east Winston-Salem.
Carver High School is one of six Forsyth County high schools designated as an “equity plus” school due to the fact that more than 35 percent of its students receive free or reduced price lunches.
During a briefing by Walker on the school system’s capital improvements on April 30, Marshall contended that there is a racial disparity in the school system.
“You basically have two school systems in Forsyth County,” Marshall said. Marshall acknowledged that Walker came on board with the school system in 2008 — two years after he and former assistant superintendent Gene Miller had discussed a list of potential capital improvements at Carver High School.
However, Marshall asserted that the capital projects list for 2008-2009 was inaccurate and included improvements for Carver High School that were never approved by the county commissioners.
“To justify that they had spent the $327,000, there were two additional projects that were added that were not part of the original list,” Marshall said. The projects schedule indicates $327,000 would be spent at Carver High School for the resurfacing of the student lot and various improvements. The projects schedule also indicates $90,000 would be appropriated for the school’s athletic fund. Replacement of a cooling tower and replacement of a hot water storage tank — two projects that totaled $145,000 — were not on the original project list approved by county commissioners last year, Marshall said. At the moment, the parking lot repaving projects have still not been completed and the school system’s addition of other projects to the list appeared to be part of a “cover-up,” Marshall said. “I pointed out [to Walker] that it had not been done,” Marshall said. “He still has not come up with a timetable. I’ve spoken with [County Manager] Dudley [Watts]. The money’s in the bank. I don’t understand the delay. Someone was trying to cover up, to show they had done something.”
Forsyth County Commissioner Walter Marshall surveys the condition of a path to the Carver High School baseball stadium on May 5. Marshall claims the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has not kept its commitment to finishing a list of capital improvements approved by the board of commissioners. (photo by Keith T. Barber)
Walker said he and Marshall went over the list of capital improvement projects for the 2008-2009 school year and discovered they were working from two different
lists. “There was a communication gap there,” Walker said. At
Marshall’s request, Walker brought all contractor invoices and receipts
to the meeting.
Walker said he first saw the letter composed
by Gene Miller and dated Sept. 12, 2006 at last week’s meeting. In the
letter, Miller listed improvement projects Marshall had requested for
Carver High School, with an estimated total cost of $250,400. Walker
said when he came on board last year, he was not aware of the 2006
letter. Those projects would have had to be approved for the 2007-2008
school budget, and according to the school system, it did not receive
funding for those projects. The reason the other projects were added to
the list was based in part on his lack of knowledge of the 2006 list.
However, a number of the projects on the list have either been
completed or are in the process of being completed, Walker said. “We’re
more on the same list than I thought,” he said. During a tour of Carver
on May 5, Marshall pointed out the line of demarcation created when the
contractor, Larco Construction Company, stopped working on the project.
About a quarter of the parking lot was not repaved. In the original
request, Marshall had asked the school system to pave the access road
to the lot off Carver School Road as well. A visual inspection of the
access road revealed it had not been resurfaced “in years,” Marshall
said. Marshall also pointed out that the cost of repaving the Mount
Tabor High School parking lot was completed for $90,000, nearly $60,000
less than a smaller job at Carver High School, according to school
system records.
Walker said the access road had not been
repaved because of a spike in gas prices last year that led to an
increase in the price of asphalt. The budgeted amount for the project,
$110,000, soared to $148,000. In addition, the $148,000 could not cover
the entire surface included in the original project, so the central
administration asked Carver High School administrators to indicate the
most important area to be covered. Carver High School officials said
the bus parking lot area was the priority, and repaving the back
parking lot was postponed indefinitely, Walker said. Explaining the
price difference between the projects at Carver High School and Mount
Tabor High School, Walker said Carver High School required the removal
of the previous surface and repaving, whereas Mount Tabor High School
only required repaving.
During the May 5 tour, Marshall
pointed out that the area behind the gymnasium adjacent to the football
field that had also not been repaved as he had requested in 2006.
Marshall surveyed an access road to the baseball field that had not
been widened and had not received a fresh bed of gravel. He pointed out
that undergrowth around the football field had only been partially
removed.
Walker
said he could not commit to widening the access road. He said the
undergrowth was only partially removed due to concerns about increased
erosion resulting from the removal.
Marshall said he was
satisfied with Walker’s claim that he was unaware of the 2006 letter
from Gene Miller, but the discrepancies between the list of projects
approved by the county commissioners last year and the list presented
April 30 causes him great concern.
During the April 30
briefing from Superintendent Donald L. Martin Jr., Marshall disputed
the accuracy of the capital projects reports presented by the school
system. At the time, Marshall said Carver High School had only spent
$45,000 on athletics plus the cost of a new sprinkler system, and that
no other improvements had been completed.
School board member
Victor Johnson, who represents District 1, said it was unfair for
Marshall to place all the blame on the school system for the issues at
Carver High School.
“It’s a problem in the administration at
Carver of getting things done,” Johnson said. “I can’t really see it as
the board’s problem. I think it’s the school administration’s fault for
not putting pressure on the board. The schools where I’ve worked, we’ve
gotten most of the things we needed.”
Johnson, a former
assistant principal at Carver High School, said maintaining ball fields
and other athletic facilities is the responsibility of schools’ booster
clubs.
“Carver has had a good football program for the past 15
years — they’re making money. They should take care of the problems,”
Johnson said. “Walter knows the story. They made the money; some things
should’ve been taken care of. They got two state championships in
football.
The girls basketball team has won at least one
[state title] so they should have some money.” Marshall said his
investigation into the matter revealed major flaws in how the school
system spends and accounts for the expenditure of its capital
improvement dollars.
“From this point on, the county will be
more vigilant and looking at those records after what we have
uncovered,” he said. “At this point, all I want to know is if they
complete those projects. Any further investigations will have to come
from someone else. It makes you question why something like this
happened.”
