Innovative school points the way

Editorial, Greenville Daily Reflector, August 17, 2013.

Last Thursday’s visit to a unique public school in Plymouth by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture couldn’t have come at a better time for this state’s beleaguered national reputation — an especially welcome development for eastern North Carolina, particularly vulnerable to legislative hatchet-wielding.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s visit included a tour of Plymouth’s Northeast Regional School of Biotechnology and Agriscience, a first-of-its-kind public, regional high school designed to give students a chance to earn their high school diplomas and as much as two years of college credit in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“A very innovative and creative educational opportunity,” the secretary called it.

The school, its second year just now beginning, serves students from Pitt, Martin, Beaufort and Washington counties — 115 freshmen and sophomores this term. There were 100 applicants for 60 available seats this year.

For these motivated young people, it’s not an easy decision. Pitt County’s three dozen students who attend face an hour-plus bus ride to a school with no cafeteria, no gym, band or sports programs. “It’s a different world,” said Principal Hal Davis Jr. “This is a different way of doing business.”

The school is housed in the Vernon G. James Research and Extension Center, where students often work alongside agricultural researchers in their labs. In its brief existence, the school already has expanded to a second Washington County site, the World Technology Center in Roper. It is funded by the state and the county school districts from which its students come. Its $1 million budget is based on enrollment.

Vilsack praised the school’s agriculture emphasis: “In today’s United States, a lot of schools are not doing what you’re doing (agricultural education). The sad reality is just when we need more of that, we’re scaling it back.”

Also on the tour was former Plymouth teacher and state school board member Jean Woolard, who told the secretary the school needed funding to expand: “We’re determined to keep this school going. If we train the workforce in biotechnology and agriscience, industry will come.”

Such industry could be critical for the eastern region, and increasingly, the state. This fledgling school in the east finds itself at the confluence of education and development, where nourishment from forward-thinking leadership could break ground for future harvests — absent that leadership, or commitment to innovation, those fields will lie fallow.

“It’s a competitive world,” Secretary Vilsack told the NRSBA students last week, “and we’ve got to pick up our game.”

When the time comes, here’s hoping the secretary’s voice can still be heard in Raleigh’s legislative hallways