Education advocates gather in Halifax, NC to mark the one-year anniversary of the Center's report and the county's renewed struggle for education equity
This summer marked the one-year anniversary of the UNC
Center for Civil Rights’ report, “Unless Our Children Begin to Learn Together: The State of Education in Halifax County.” To commemorate this milestone, education advocates in the community held
a press conference at the Old Halifax County Courthouse, where the report was
first presented, to review what had been accomplished in the year and the
challenges that remain to bring high-quality, equitable education to Halifax
County.
At the press conference, CEES Vice President Gary
Grant, speaking on behalf of the Coalition, called upon county and
school
elected officials, parents, teachers, and students to continue the
struggle for
equity: “We bear witness to the fact
that the problems of poor and barely mediocre student performance at the
three
public school systems has not been addressed. Nor has the root cause,
the continuing extreme racial segregation among the three school
districts in
Halifax County. The quality of education
has been undermined on a county-wide basis for much too long at too
great a
cost to too many of our children.”
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Posted by Taiyyaba A. Qureshi on Mon. September 17, 2012 4:17 PM
Categories: Community Leaders, Education, Halifax County, Leandro, Race Discrimination, Segregation
The NC Court of Appeals affirmed the Superior Court Judge Howard
Manning’s July 2011 order barring the State from limiting or denying eligible
at-risk four year olds admission to the State’s prekindergarten program. The Court’s ruling reinforces State’s
continuing duty to at-risk students across North Carolina, noting that “under Leandro II, the State has a duty to
prepare all ‘at-risk’ students to avail themselves of an opportunity to obtain
a sound basic education.”
The Center represents the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP in the
matter and filed a brief in the appeal. Read the Court’s opinion and the
Center’s brief.
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Posted by Taiyyaba A. Qureshi on Tue. August 21, 2012 4:45 PM
Categories: Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Education, Leandro
On April 25, the UNC Center for Civil Rights filed a brief in the latest appeal in the ongoing Leandro litigation, the landmark court case regarding the State's constitutional obligation to provide a sound basic education to North Carolina children that began 18 years ago. Since 2005, the Center has represented parents and children in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch of the NAACP, with the support of the North Carolina State Conference and the national NAACP. The current appeal focuses on the State's continuing duty to remedy the constitutional violations that were established in the previous Leandro rulings from the North Carolina Supreme Court.
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Posted by Mark Dorosin on Mon. April 30, 2012 3:41 PM
Categories: Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Education, Leandro
The Center began working in Halifax County in 2008 on a range of community inclusion issues.
Lincoln Heights, an excluded community on the outskirts of the City of Roanoke Rapids, worked with the Center to stop the City from locating a solid waste transfer station in their neighborhood, which has been the site of several previous municipal waste facilities. The community’s engagement and advocacy also helped bring public attention to other exclusion based impacts issues affecting Lincoln Heights, including denial of access to municipal services and electoral power in local government.
As we continued to work with communities across the county on a range of issues, one theme consistently emerged among residents throughout Halifax County: "Something is very wrong with the schools in this county."
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Posted by Taiyyaba A. Qureshi on Sat. October 22, 2011 8:10 PM
Categories: Education, Halifax County, Leandro, Segregation