Cooke: Burke schools must regain full accreditation

By: Charles F. Cooke | Morganton News Herald
Published: November 08, 2009

Hickory (in Burke County), NC --

As a lifelong resident of Burke County and a former member of the Burke County school board, I have followed the current school board controversy with great interest. When the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement decided this past summer to send in a team to evaluate the situation, I felt that the public would finally get an unbiased opinion with regard to the claims and counterclaims being made by the current school board majority and its opponents.
I have taught at Lenoir-Rhyne University for many years and in that time I have served on a number of SACS accreditation teams at the college level. The role of a visiting team is not to find fault, but to carefully evaluate the situation and make recommendations for improvement. It is not unusual for a visiting team to make several recommendations that must be addressed to retain full accreditation, but never, in my experience, 12 such recommendations! Anyone familiar with accreditation will recognize that the visiting team made a stinging indictment of the school board majority.
The leaders of the board majority have known the content of the SACS CASI report for months and have taken no action to correct the problems. One can only conclude that accreditation doesn't matter to them. I do not personally know any of the members of the current board majority. As far as I know, each of them is sincerely doing what he or she believes is best for the school system.
However, the sad fact is that their actions have brought Burke County to the brink of an educational and economic nightmare: loss of accreditation of our high schools.
Please note that SACS CASI is not some group from Atlanta trying to tell Burke County how to run its schools. Thousands of school systems across dozens of states have collectively determined the minimum acceptable behavior that parents, students and the public have a right to expect from their public schools.
Current high school students in Burke County have a particular interest in maintaining accreditation, but all stakeholders have a right to expect members of the school board to exhibit a level of behavior that results in SACS CASI accreditation.
Some people may believe that accreditation is just a "school problem" and doesn't affect them if they have no children in school. Wrong! The Burke County school system serves over 2 million meals each year, operates school buses over 2.5 million miles each year and funnel more than $100 million through the local economy each year. Any situation that adversely affects the Burke County schools adversely affects all of Burke County!
Make no mistake about it; this election was much about accreditation. To move the school system in a positive direction will require school board members with the experience, expertise and determination to make the corrections mandated by SACS CASI. The four school board candidates who clearly possess these qualities and, in addition, have a plan to address the SACS CASI report are Susan Stroup, Sam Wilkinson, Buddy Armour and Catherine Thomas. For the sake of our students and the future of our county, I am glad they were elected.

Cooke: Burke schools must regain full accreditation

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