NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A quorum-less emergency meeting on Tuesday did little to assuage the New Hanover County Hispanic-Latino Commission’s concerns over the closing of a local specialty school.
READ MORE: Students beg NHCS to keep Mosley high school program open after closure announced
New Hanover County Schools announced the closure of the Career Readiness Academy at Mosley, which serves 62 students, in a letter to parents on Dec. 1. The move surprised parents, students and the school board, many of whom reported no prior knowledge of the planned shut down after the 2023/2024 school year.
The academy hosts 62 students; those not among the 10 graduates will have to transfer to another high school. Over half of Mosley’s population identify as Hispanic or Latino.
The Hispanic-Latino Commission had many questions on the closure Tuesday, though not many were answered by NHCS Executive Director of Secondary School Support Penny Presley.
Namely, the commission asked for the district’s rationale on closing the school; Presley said she could not speak on decisions she was not part of.
In December, the district attributed the action as a result of low enrollment and lack of funding for the program. According to Chief Financial Officer Ashley Sutton, one of the grants funding the program, worth $350,000, is ending.
At the Dec. 5 school board meeting, Mosley students and parents lauded the academy’s small size and expressed appreciation for one-on-one time their teachers could spend with them, or the adaptive environment that helped them learn in their own ways. They feared they would not get that same experience at one of the district’s four traditional high schools.
Parent Rachel Hladik, whose Mosley student has ADHD and has struggled in other learning environments, also spoke out during the meeting’s public comment.
“My student is not a behavior problem, but he is not gifted, and he will not get the attention he needs to prosper,” Hladik said.
Though the district is hosting multiple information sessions and working with individual students on their transition to another school, Presley reported she was not aware of any plans to track the transfers’ progress or keep metrics on them post switch. Her answer was in response to a question asked by Cynthia Munoz, a 2024 candidate for the New Hanover County Board of Education who is not on the commission but attended Tuesday’s meeting.
Commission member and UNCW Spanish professor Amanda Boomershine asked what community members were consulted when making the decision; again, the question could not be answered, despite the commission worries on the impact to the academy’s community.
“I don’t know of any study or statistic that was done related to Mosley or any inquiry that was made to try to protect the Hispanic or Latino population,” immigration lawyer and commission member Helen Tarokic said at the meeting.
It is unclear who among NHCS leadership initiated Mosley’s closure, which will only affect the high school and not the pre-K program; district staff have said the school’s fate has been a question for years.
As explained by board member Stephanie Kraybill last month, the board should be informed of major programming changes, preferably before they occur, but do “not have to approve them unless there are budget implications, specifically spending more money.”
Tarokic reminded the audience the commission was established in February 2023 to advise the county commissioners on matters related to the Hispanic/Latino community and to serve as a liaison between the community and New Hanover County. The commission doesn’t have a direct relationship with NHCS but can serve as a community resource and sounding board for Hispanic and Latino support and inclusivity.
While the commission was not consulted on closing Mosley, it is looking to share its expertise to help the academy’s potential transformation into a newcomer school.
Introduced as a concept in December, the newcomer school would serve as a transition academy for students with English as a second language to accommodate the growing number of multilingual students in the district. According to Chief Academic Officer Patrice Faison, the CRA closure has “nothing to do with the newcomer school” and is “still hypothetical and depending on a number of things.”
At Monday’s meeting, Boomershine asked if there were any newcomer schools NHCS is using as a model. Presley pointed to Guilford County, which has two such schools the executive director described as “very successful.”
Boomershine pointed out ESL students achieve greater success in learning English when surrounded by peers speaking the language, which would largely not be the case at the newcomer school. Most of the students will learn English, with the goal of transitioning to one of the district’s traditional schools within a year of arrival.
Still, the newcomer school, as Faison said, is not set it stone. The school board is set to discuss Mosley’s future at their upcoming school board meeting on Jan. 9.
“It is a sign of hope and light discussions,” commission member Edelmira Segovia said. Segovia is also the co-chair of the UNCW Latino Alliance of Southeastern North Carolina and director of Centro Hispano at UNCW.
In the meantime, the commission plans to draft a position statement on Mosley’s closure and the newcomer school, in an effort to make their voices heard and invite conversations with county leaders. Though a resolution could not be approved at Monday’s meeting due to a lack of quorum, the commission plans to have a statement prepared in the coming weeks.
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