Title:Oral History Interview with Venton Bell, January 30, 1991.
Interview M-0018. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007):
Electronic Edition.
Author:
Bell, Venton,
interviewee
Interview conducted by
Wells, Goldie F.
Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the
electronic publication of this interview.
Text encoded by
Jennifer Joyner
Sound recordings digitized by
Aaron Smithers
Southern Folklife Collection
First edition, 2007
Size of electronic edition: 80 Kb
Publisher: The University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
2007.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
Languages used in the text:
English
Revision history:
2007-00-00, Celine Noel, Wanda Gunther, and Kristin Martin revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic
edition.
2007-07-10, Jennifer Joyner finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
Source(s):
Title of recording: Oral History Interview with Venton Bell, January 30,
1991. Interview M-0018. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Title of series: Series M. Black High School Principals. Southern Oral
History Program Collection (M-0018)
Author: Goldie F. Wells
Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Venton Bell, January
30, 1991. Interview M-0018. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)
Title of series: Series M. Black High School Principals. Southern Oral
History Program Collection (M-0018)
Author: Venton Bell
Description: 91.4 Mb
Description: 15 p.
Note:
Interview conducted on January 30, 1991, by Goldie F.
Wells; recorded in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Note:
Transcribed by Unknown.
Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series M. Black High School Principals, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
Editorial practices An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition. The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original. The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines. Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " All em dashes are encoded as —
Interview with Venton Bell, January 30, 1991. Interview M-0018. Southern
Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Bell, Venton,
interviewee
Interview Participants
VENTON
BELL, interviewee
GOLDIE F.
WELLS, interviewer
[TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Page 1
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Today's date is January 30, 1991. I am in the office of Dr. Venton Bell
who is the principal of Harding High School in Charlotte, North
Carolina. Dr. Bell, I would like for you to introduce yourself and say
that you know that this interview is being recorded.
VENTON BELL:
My name is Venton Bell and I am principal of Harding High School and I am
aware that this interview is being recorded.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I'm so pleased that you answered my questionnaire and sent it back to me.
I am doing research on the role perceptions of Black high school
principals. I wrote to the State Department last year to find out how
many Black administrators we have at high schools. They sent me a list
of 41 and of those 41 some of them are principals of what we call the
alternative schools and not traditional high schools. Back in 1964,
there were over 200 Black high school principals so I am interviewing
principals from 1964, and 1989, and then I am going to do a comparison.
I am using the oral history method so I am interviewing you and it will
be transcribed then I will make some analysis from my findings from
these interviews. You will get one of the transcriptions back so that
you can see if you need to make any revisions before I use it.
I want you to tell me how you became a high school principal.
VENTON BELL:
How did I become a high school principal? Everything will be pretty right
except for the dates. It has been so long. I started out teaching in
1966, in a Black junior high school--Yarbrote. Later the name was
changed to Kennedy Junior High School here in Charlotte. Having been a
product of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system myself as a student,
teaching in junior high school and coaching when we had the
desegregation I was transferred to South Mecklenburg High School. It was
when they were closing down the Black schools and getting the Black
teachers absorbed into their system. We went to the high school at South
Mecklenburg and taught math there for a while. While there I became--the
principal there had me doing other duties in addition to teaching like
covering the halls and chaperoning the cafeteria. He apparently saw some
things that encouraged me to help him out more in the office area and
while doing that I began to like that type of stuff so I thought about
at that time maybe pursuing an administrative certification. I had
already received my Master's degree at Notra Dame at the
Page 2
time but did not have an administrative certification so
then I began to work on my administrative certification at UNCC. One
person that I worked with at South Mecklenburg is Jimmy [unknown], who is now the area superintendent for the South
Olympic area and the assistant principal at South Mecklenburg at the
time I was there teaching. He and I got to be quite good friends so he
got his first appointment as the administrator of the Metro Center
Evening School. He asked that I go down and work with him as a second
job in the evenings. There I assisted him very much with that and I
began to even like it--because he was off campus a lot and I got a
chance to run the school. I liked it even more. So he and I became
closer and when he received his first high school principalship or first
real principalship he worked it out so that I would go with him to
Olympic High School as his administrative assistant--no teaching
assignment just number one assistant. I worked there with several other
assistant principals and got so I enjoyed the job a lot. Then the bug
bit me again so I finished my certification at UNCC and from there I
stayed for numerous years as an assistant to the principal. Then I went
over to the assistant principal at West Mecklenburg High School for
about six months and there I received my first principalship which was
in the junior high school. I remained there for five, six, or seven
years I guess and then from there I was transferred to Harding as
principal and this is my fourth year at Harding High School.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Tell me something about Harding High School.
VENTON BELL:
Harding High School started in 1935, way back in the old days before I
was born. Harding was originally located to the best of my knowledge
near Irving Avenue. You probably heard about Dorothy Counts? This was
the school that she tried to enter but it was located on the other side
of town. At that time it was all White. Harding, the new plant, came
here in 1955 or 1957, and they moved it to this side of town. It
originally was a predominantly White school. In fact, I look at the
yearbooks and see how they have changed over the years. We have a
carload of yearbooks in the media center and I just discovered those
things there. It has changed gradually. Harding was located in a
neighborhood setting and the neighborhood around here immediately a
while back was predominantly White and the school was predominantly
White. It reflected the student body and over the years the school has
changed from White to Black. We are about 64% Black in the school.
Harding has one of the unique characteristics as does West Mecklenburg.
There are eleven high schools and there are only two high schools in the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System that have grades 9-12. Harding is
one of the schools. We have a population of approximately 900-1000 kids
which makes us not the smallest high school, Olympic being the smallest,
but we are the smallest if you take out the 9th graders we would be the
smallest high school. With the 9th graders, we are not
Page 3
the smallest high school. We have approximately 30-40 ADM positions,
17-19 vocational positions, and one of the unique things about us is we
have the BEH classes here, three units of BEH--two of self-contained
cross-categorical classes here and we have 50-60 students who are in the
resource program. So we have a wide, wide range of students. Our
socio-economic level is not the highest; it is quite low not only for
the Blacks but for the White students. We are very competitive based on
what we are dealing with based on our socio-economic ladder. One of the
other unique things about Harding is that we also has an evening school
that operates here. When we get ready to leave then the school is not
closed. Another set of students come in and this is a set of students
who come from all the surrounding high schools and may have been high
risk students or dropped out before who go to school here in the
evenings from 3-9 o'clock at night. Those are a couple of the
characteristics but basically we have always been known to be highly
competitive. We have Morehead scholars, we won the Field Houston award
for the last upteen times Harding has had either the male or female
recipient of that. We have been known to be highly competitive
athletically. Scholastically we are definitely improving. We have a
very, very dedicated faculty.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What size is your faculty?
VENTON BELL:
As I said before we fill 91 boxes. We have 35-40 ADM positions. We have
17 vocational positions and we have the Special Ed, band, and all these
other things but we usually fill about 91 boxes. We have 5 secretaries,
3 assistant principals, 3 guidance counselors, 2 media specialists with
an aide. We are a very accomplished high school.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What is your racial makeup of your faculty?
VENTON BELL:
Charlotte-Mecklenburg have a goal to keep you within the 30% range as far
as--and it is similar to the student body. So we are on the upper part
of 30% minority faculty on our staff.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
But your minority enrollment is about 64%?
VENTON BELL:
Yes.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Now I am going to ask you something about the responsibilities you have
and how you deal with them? Tell me something about personnel and
teacher selection.
VENTON BELL:
Okay. I have an organizational chart. I have 3 assistant principals. The
hiarchy or the organization chart of the principal is that I supervise 3
assistant principals. Each one of my assistant principals have their
responsibility for a certain faction of the campus. For example, one of
the
Page 4
assistant principals is in charge of the
custodians and that means that he is in charge of anything to do with
maintenance. He will have so many teachers he is responsible for
observing during the year. He may have three different departments he is
working with--the vocation department, and maybe another department. He
is responsible for doing that. Anything related to maintenance that is
his wing. I have another assistant principal who is in charge of the
secretaries. We are trying to cut down on my scope of trying to manage.
One assistant principal is in charge of secretaries and all the duties
and things that are related to secretaries or fall in her realm and she
also has a certain number of teachers in certain departments. Whatever
her major is, if it is English then she has English teachers and some
other teachers that she is responsible for doing basically their
evaluations and PDP's and things of that nature. We have another
assistant principal who is a science major. She is in charge of the
guidance counselors. The head guidance counselor works directly with me
too but as far as the person in charge of that department is the
assistant principal who has the guidance counselors and then she has the
duties that are associated with that fall in her range. My job is mainly
to manage the three of them and see that they take care of things. Also
the financial secretary usually falls directly under my jurisdiction and
the athletic director. Those are my responsibilities. We go down that
line and that is usually the form of our organization chart that we have
and it seems--it is new this year. We have not had that before and also
there are certain teachers that I am in charge of. I'm a math major
therefore, I am in charge of the math teachers and all new teachers
coming in and several parts like that. We try to split that up equally
so that we have the same number of observations and that type stuff.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Selection of your teachers.
VENTON BELL:
We have a personnel department here in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School
System. Once you identify a vacancy and turn it in to the personnel
department their responsibility is to pool the "best fit" candidate
based upon the description of the job that you have available in the
system in their files. Once these people have been identified these
names are given and screened initially by the personnel department. Then
these names are given to the principal to his designee. What we do here
once we identify those persons we have interviews set up with them and
we have members from our faculty advisory committee. Those are people
who are elected by the faculty as their liaison between the principal
and the teachers. We select certain people from that committee and the
department chairperson from the department where the vacancy lies, one
of my assistant principals on the team and then myself. We usually go
through and observe the people and interview them and then
Page 5
make recommendations to me and usually we have some kind of
concensus and that gives some ownership as far as who is going to be
with the faculty. It makes them feel better if they help me select the
people so teachers have input in that especially the faculty advisory
committee.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Curriculum and instruction.
VENTON BELL:
Naturally if you have gone through your courses you know that the
principal is going to be the instructional leader in the school. I tell
you you don't have too much time for that type stuff. You being in the
central office I'm sure you go visit schools too and you know you try to
maintain and try to keep the paperwork from overtaking you. My main
instructional person--I originally had two assitant principals and an
API (assistant principal of instruction). That person still has that big
responsibility working directly with the principal. She is basically
responsible for making sure that we--she meets with the department
chairpersons to discuss concerns they have and she meets with us as
individual principals and individual administrators meet with our own
departments. For example, I meet with the math department when they have
concerns and Ms. Smith will meet with the vocational people when they
have concerns and whatever department you are assigned to. In
Charlotte-Mecklenburg a lot of our curriculum stuff is passed down to us
because we have a person in the system who is the "curriculum specialist
for math", and they simply feed us the data and we get memos telling us
what we can do and we can't do. You don't have too much flexibility in
being able to do a whole lot because somebody has already made the
decision in the hiarchy and you simply have to implement these decisions
so there isn't that much decision-making as far as the curriculum is
concerned except for how you can make things fit into your particular
school.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Discipline.
VENTON BELL:
Discipline is a nightmare. This year in the conference planning stage one
of the key things that we are working on this year was this one. I am
supposed to be a disciplinarian, I don't know. Last year we had this
discipline plan of what the penalities were. Then we had a card that we
kept on students. You don't come to the office, you don't have a card.
Once you come to the office then we make a card on you. The card is kept
in a central location. Everything is put on the computer and so when you
put down the offense the student did, the date and the person who dealt
with him and the teacher who referred him and then what he did. If it is
something trivial then we usually deal with the kid. But if it is
something the parent needs to know about because we have more severe
consequences in the future then we make sure the parents know about it
the first time.
Page 6
For example: If you've got profanity
the first time, two hours detention after school and parental contact.
On Mondays and Fridays we have a teacher who stays she is on a flex
schedule and she stays one hour after school for detention for two days
a week.
VENTON BELL:
Just two days a week--because you have to let the kid know about it in
advance so they can take care of it. The second time you do this if you
do profanity directly toward a teacher it is automatically out-of-school
suspension. We go through that as our plan that we had last year. So we
revised it this year and we go the whole ten yards.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Yes, it is. It goes from front to back and it is from 1-12.
VENTON BELL:
What it does, it keeps consistency. You don't want to have one where your
kid does something and then my kid does something and then I give your
kid one punishment and give another kid another punishment. That would
create a lot of problems. So we needed some kind of consistency. So all
of my administrators had this in their files so when the kids does
something we look at the card to see where they were, this your second
or third offense and we can see what the penalty is going to be. This
does not take out some of the random stuff that happens but it cuts down
on the random stuff. It makes the decisions more meaningful and you can
discuss it with somebody intelligently. So we decided not to use this
this year except for major things. We decided to go to a uniform
discipline policy. You see these posters now in the teachers classrooms.
This year because of our competency school planning the problem that we
had was that if a kid does something here like profanity one time and
you give them a first penalty and he does something down here in the
school parking lot, we have a parent conference and you keep going
through the same things over and over and yet the kid commits different
offenses. So we want to find some way of dealing with a kid instead of
having him commit so many different offenses and then having to go so
long then he commits offenses then we deal with him. So we went back and
revised the plan and said, the first time you are referred to the office
if it is not one of the major offenses, you get the warning; the second
time you are referred to the office regardless of what it is. If it is
something we find you guilty of, you get the one hour detention then we
go down through the line. The administrators are having difficulty
getting adjusted to it. It has been very hard.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
It looks like it is easy.
VENTON BELL:
It's not. Suppose you are going through this process and all of a sudden
a kid comes up and he has been fighting or suppose a kid comes up with
something that is
Page 7
really trivial. I told John,
anybody who didn't bring his homework in today that I was going to send
them to the office. Sometimes that does happen. Okay? Then you've got
the kid in the office two times already and you have to put them in ISS
or something like that. You see, that doesn't give you the flexibility
you need.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
So we still have to go back to teacher judgement.
VENTON BELL:
Then if you don't do it then the teachers want to get on your case about
it. So you have to deal with that. We're trying to tell teachers to
think a little bit before they send kids to the office. Don't send them
on trivial stuff that you should handle in your own classroom. So that
is why that is giving us a problem now. So we're having to go back and
still use some discretion in making decisions. You are not going to send
a kid home because he didn't have a pencil and this is the third time
he's been in the office.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Transportation.
VENTON BELL:
Transportation is done by my assistant principal, Diane Perry. That is
one of her duties. When she comes in the morning she checks the buses
in. We, at Harding, are on TIMS. All schools are not on TIMS but they
are finally breaking them in. We are on TIMS and therefore our
assignments are made through the computer. In the mornings the buses
start coming in at 6:55--because we have the breakfast program here--the
assistant principal is in the parking lot to check the buses and she has
a check-off list to make sure all the buses are in on time. We have
adult bus drivers by the way. They come in and bring the kids in and let
them disembark and then they go to the cafeteria to eat because we have
a large percentage of our students on free or reduced meals. They go
there and they eat breakfast in the mornings and they hang out in the
cafeteria or in A building. In the double deck building there is a big
square place there but it is not the mall but it has a big space. They
go there and they spend their time there and then they leave. We have
about forty to fifty percent of our students who ride buses. We don't
have as many kids with cars as some of the other schools. We have a lot
of walk-ons in the immediate neighborhood and we have a lot who drive. A
large percent of our students ride the bus.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What is the number of buses?
VENTON BELL:
About twenty some.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Utilization of funds.
VENTON BELL:
Charlotte-Mecklenburg is weak again in that. We have X amount of money
that is allocated to the school based upon your enrollment--your 10 day
enrollment. That is why
Page 8
you try to get as many kids
as you possibly can in the first ten days. You get so much money per
student and that's out of several funds. You have instructional funds,
general instructional funds, different type funds you use for certain
things based upon how many students you have. You have to disburse this
money--it's not really in your possession, it is money downtown--you
simply write a draft on it and follow the guidelines and you have to
satisfy. We allocate money into departments after I take my expenses out
and what it is going to take for me to run that copy machine in there
and my field trips and miscellaneous. I strike that money from my
instructional allotment. The money that is remaining I simply divide the
money to the departments according to the number of teachers in the
department or according to the number of students they have involved in
the department. The amount of that money is given to the department
chairperson by the financial secretary and any requests that they decide
how they are going to spend it in their department and any request that
they have has to be signed by the department chairperson. I initial it
and send it to my financial secretary and she subtracts that from the
allotment. All the money that they are allotted they can spend.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Cafeteria management.
VENTON BELL:
Cafeteria management in the schools is put away from the principal. It is
a disjointed thing. She and I communicate and make sure that we run
things smoothly and we communicate as far as times, as far as cleaning
the cafeteria, but the principal has nothing to do with the cafeteria.
In fact, most principals don't even have keys to the cafeteria to the
back part of the cafeteria. That is a complete disjointed thing from the
school as far as the management. That is run completely by the cafeteria
manager. We simply talk and we evaluate her but we don't have anything
to do with the cafeteria.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Buildings and grounds.
VENTON BELL:
In Charlotte-Mecklenburg we have a maintenance department that is
basically responsible for buildings and grounds. We have our own
custodial staff that is responsible for doing the minor cleaning of the
building and picking up papers before the grass is cut. All the heavy
things to do we have the maintenance department that is responsible for
doing that. In this system we have something that is called an operation
specialist and there are five of them. They are responsible for two high
schools and all the schools that feed those two high schools and they
are responsible for making sure that you keep your custodial staff
employed. They are responsible for doing that. You buy the supplies for
those helping and you buy supplies that they are responsible for. There
are eleven high schools and there
Page 9
are five of those
people and each one of them has three that they are responsible for.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Community relations.
VENTON BELL:
We have a Squash Special Program here at Harding High School. We have a
unique program this year that has just been started called Squash. It is
a school within a school at Harding. We have it on the second floor. The
9th graders have a tendency to get lost in high school so we have
isolated the 9th graders and put them upstairs on the top floor. I went
to visit Salisbury and all these other type schools to look at their
middle school concept. So all of our 9th graders are up on the second
floor. We identify them and have them grouped into three different
groups--about 100 and some kids per group and gave them four teachers.
Those four teachers work with them teaching them language arts, math,
science, and social studies and they have a wing. They just walk from
one room to another and the teachers want to do some interdisciplinary
type stuff. They can do that. If they want to teach them for two hours,
they can do that. They can do what they want to with their teams. The
students stay there for four periods a day and the 5th period they hit
that floor. They leave that place like I don't know what to take their
electives and P.E. class. But it has worked great for us. It has helped
keep kids in school. They don't have an opportunity to get involved with
the upper classmen and a lot of the bad habits that may have been formed
by upper classmen they are not exposed to that and it is working out
real well.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Are they using cooperative learning?
VENTON BELL:
They are using cooperative learning. They are doing a lot of
interdishonary stuff--relating to science and math. They are working on
something with gas logs and the math teacher is working on ratios within
their group. The teachers have one extra planning period and that is to
help the kids. We were given two extra positions this year and the
teachers teach four periods and have t-planning. The teachers meet and
they call parents and they meet with the students and all this has to be
with the parents and then they have their regular planning period.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Community relations. How do you think people feel about Harding?
VENTON BELL:
We have a partnership with a company that gave us $51,000 as one of our
partners. Now Harding has changed a great deal. Harding traditionally
was a predominantly White school and now it is predominantly White and
it is perceived as being the school where Black kids want to come. We
have a perception that we are trying to fight. We are athletically
oriented, that we are not as academic as we should be--that
Page 10
when they compare test results and you do a socio-economic
return when you start comparing apples to oranges and you get that. We
get that. We feel and our results show that we are doing good with the
products that we are dealing with. We are making the products the best
they can be based upon the product we have initially coming in to us. We
think people feel pretty good about the school. The students feel good
about the school. You have to realize that we don't have a neighborhood
community anymore. So our kids who go to Harding may be living over near
West Mecklenburg or live in West Charlotte especially if they are the
Black satellite because the Black west side of town is full of Black
people and that means you can't have all the Black kids going to those
schools in those neighborhoods like West Charlotte, Harding, and you
have to pull out of those and put them in different places and so
therefore it is very diverse. We think we have a good positive image and
we can do some improving on it but we are working on that trying to
improve it and make it better. We would like for people to think of us
as being an academic giant but that is not the way things are.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Then it takes years because you are building a new image.
VENTON BELL:
But you just can't build an image unless you have the products to build
that image. In your researching I'm sure you have discovered that some
of the things that affect student achievement more than anything else
their success in school deals basically with the family, the families
that they come from; what is the mother's educational level, and what
expectation do they have. That goes back to parent expectation. Money is
important but it not one of the key things it has more to do with
expectations that the parent has for them and the value that the parents
place upon education. That has a lot to do with this. That is something
that we need to work on--we need to educate parents more to expect more
of their kids and want more for their kids and that will have a bigger
effect than anything else. You can take the same school and set it in a
neighborhood where you have kids with parents who have Doctor's degrees,
or parents who are engineers or lawyers.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
How much administrative power and control do you think you have over your
school site and your responsibilities?
VENTON BELL:
We try to deal with site-based management. I try to be a participatory
type manager. I've been known in my earlier days when I was younger to
be a articratic teller type management, a manager. Now a lot of the
decisions I let other people make decisions. I see that the decisions
are being made. The faculty advisor committee have certain things that
they make decisions about in that I'm just a voting
Page 11
member of the committee. I try to act as facilitator. A lot of times
teachers don't want to be in power to do those things but I am trying to
give them the authority to go ahead and make decisions themselves. I
have the authority to run the school to make sure that we run the school
efficiently and effectively and that we try to give the students the
best possible education that we can while they are with us. How I
disseminate that "authority" is basically left up to the individual
principal and we have been encouraged to let teachers have more input
into running their immediate educational environment through their
representatives and that is what we are doing.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
How did the desegregation of schools affect your role as a principal?
VENTON BELL:
You've got to remember that when I became a principal we had already
desegregated the schools. In fact it was done when I was a teacher--so
how does it affect my role as a principal? Repeat the question?
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Do you think desegregation of schools has any bearing on where you are
right now?
VENTON BELL:
Obviously. If they hadn't desegregated schools I wouldn't be at Harding
High School. I wouldn't have been at Eastwood Junior High School. In the
old days we had two different systems, the city Blacks, the city Whites,
county Blacks and the county Whites. The consolidation of the school
systems in tearing down the old structures in hiarchy had resulted in
the closing of a lot of Black facilities and a lot of Black principals
and you are probably aware of that more than I. Some of them were
delegated to assistant roles when they first did it with the
understanding that as schools opened they would be elevated back to
principalships. I don't see how it affected me because I was not able to
experience what happened back in the old part and what is happening in
the new part. I feel that I have parietal with my colleagues. I feel
comparable. I make sure that my opinions are expressed and I make sure
that my kids get the best that they possibly can. I'm in there begging
for my kids like anybody else and I don't really see how it is affecting
me in any adverse way--desegregation. One segment of the students it is
probably affecting because there are probably things that you would do
differently and there was probably more trust among the parents when the
schools were of either race. When we integrated that caused parents to
be a little more sometimes apprehensive about what was going on in the
schools or whether their kid was getting the shaft or if the kid was not
being treated fairly. That made them question that even more. I don't
think that happened as much when you had schools that were all of one
race because everybody was treated the same then.
Page 12
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Do you enjoy your job? Why?
VENTON BELL:
Yes. I really enjoy my job. There is something you can say about being a
high school principal. There is not a dull moment. There is always
something new. That is why when you were setting up this interview with
me I don't like to mark off time because when you mark off time no
telling what may happen. I may have a parent come in who is mad because
something happened last night and I have a note that my wife got for me
that some kid got slapped on the bus and didn't leave a telephone number
or anything. It is a very, very rewarding job. I like dealing with the
students, I like dealing with the teachers. I have a very, very
dedicated staff. Most of them are really, really into teaching and want
to be around the kids. You have to love kids to want to do this. There
is not enough money to make you stay in the position if you don't really
like doing it. I like teaching. I've wanted to be a teacher since I
started to school and I wanted to be around them. I hoped that someday
that I would be a high school principal. I think that I have fulfilled
that desire. I really like relating to people. I like trying to help
kids, I like seeing them go to college, I like seeing them getting jobs.
I like seeing them becoming adults, successful adults and young adults
in the world whether it is going to college or whether it is getting a
job in a factory. I like the idea of being able to have some impact upon
their lives. To be able to help them. To be able to correct them when
they are wrong. To put them on the right track. Not to punish them but
to discipline them and to teach them how to survive in a way that it is
"acceptable for a person to make it in this society".
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What do you consider the major problem of your principalship?
VENTON BELL:
Paperwork. There is not enough time to actually get into the classrooms,
to get into the buildings, to actually observe instruction taking place
and to help teachers with the instruction. There are so many other
peripheral things that you have to do. Get this report in, get this in,
that in; there is so much paperwork associated with the job and so many
other things that you have to do that you are not really able to be an
"instructional leader of the school" because you are more of the paper
manager of the school. It makes my job difficult and when I don't have
too much input into discretion in making decisions that I think could
help a kid. It is cut and dry; you've got rules and policies and it is
cut and dry where you think making this decision would be a benefit to
the kid but you don't make that decision because that is not the
standard operating procedure. That is the key thing that I think makes
the job difficult is there is so much paperwork. The federal program,
the reports that you have to do that is due. This report is due and that
report is due and instead of being
Page 13
able to manage
kids you are trying to manage the paper. In the constant changing in
what is required like observations and all this type stuff that is due
these things lead to a lot of problems.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What do you consider the most rewarding thing about your
principalship?
VENTON BELL:
That is probably more difficult than the other one. There are a lot of
things that are rewarding. I get a great deal of satisfaction in seeing
a child who has is probably been a pain and finally realizes that he/she
is becoming an adult and needs to get their act straightened out. That
satisfies me more than anything else--when you think you have really
reached a kid and gotten the kid back on the right track. It satisfies
me when you see a kid who has gotten a letter saying he has been
accepted to go to a certain school or he's gotten something he has
really been looking for. "I've been accepted at so and so"; it is very
pleasing to me the day of graduation to stand up there on the stage and
be able to give the students their diploma. Seeing these people come
through and knowing that these people are the ones that you will run
into in life. It is very rewarding to me to go into a supermarket and
somebody say, "Mr. Bell, Mr. Bell, you taught me when I was back in
junior high school over there at York Road. Mr. Bell--this is my
principal". Stuff like that, that is a good feeling. That the kids look
at you and respect you for what you are doing and that makes you feel
good.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Do you think that a Black person needs a sponsor to become a high school
principal?
VENTON BELL:
Explain to me what you mean?
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I mean a person of the other culture that says that person is able to do
it.
VENTON BELL:
That is a tough question. Here at Charlotte-Mecklenburg the procedure is
when they make that type of subjective type of stuff as far as race
is--
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I mean just from experience and from what we have observed and what we
know. Does that seem to be the case?
VENTON BELL:
I don't know. I wouldn't say that. I would say the more exposure you have
gotten by being in workshops, being around and doing things, helping
with other types of activities, just not sitting back on your rump but
getting involved in committees, getting exposure and letting them know
who you are--that helps and when people get to know you--Black and
White. So I don't think it is anything related to "race" as such. I'm
sure that all in one community that wouldn't help you. The more diverse
you are as
Page 14
far as having people know you the
better your chances are of getting a principalship.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
If you, given the fact that there are less than 40 Black high school
principals in the state of North Carolina, if you knew of a young Black,
male or female, who aspired to be a high school principal, what advice
would you give that person?
VENTON BELL:
Naturally I am assuming that that person will have enough diversion to
get all of his credentials in line. That is the first thing. You need to
be involved in the school and need to do things other than what is
required of you and you don't sit back and just do that which is
required. You expect to do A and B and do C and D too. Do a little more.
Do A,B,C, and D. You need to get involved in committees, you need to
volunteer to do stuff on the school campus and on the district level.
You need to make sure that you get involved with your professional
organizations and make sure that you are aware what is going on with
those. I would suggest also that the person tries to get some linkage
with a good college with some articulation at the college and the local
district, local LEA's involved and some linkage between them and the
college so the people can talk about them and let them know what they
are doing. Try to get as much high visibility as you possibly can. Not
just for the sake of being seen but also so you can learn from that. Try
to seek out experiences where you can learn. If they want you to come up
and work in the office a bit. That is one of the best experiences in the
world and that shows interest and also that shows the person who is the
administrator that here is somebody here who wants to do something and
they are not asking for something in return. That is a good way to get
an experience. But you need to get yourself in line, have some high
visibilities, find out what is going on, and make sure you have your
credentials in order. Try to find opportunities so that you can show the
things that you have learned. That is important. You have to work hard
and you need to have a good trusting wife. A spouse, someone who won't
mind sharing you with a lot of other people because your life is really
not your own life. When that telephone rings you have to respond to it
and that is very important.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I appreciate you taking the time. We have come to the end of this
interview guide. I have learned a lot with every interview that I have
had and it has been quite interesting. I had some ideas when I began
that there would be a lot of difference maybe between the '64 and the
'89 principals but I have found that all of you are top notch and
everybody knows his job very well. The answers are so similar that I
have come up with the idea that an administrator is an administrator and
that the years don't mean that much. It's that that is in you and the
leadership ability and the things
Page 15
you see in
children and you enjoy people. I really appreciate you taking this
time.
VENTON BELL:
I hope Ms. Wells, I hope that you are very successful here with your
endeavor to get your doctoral dissertation completed. I know that you
are going to do a good job on it. You are going to use a lot of
interviews. Just persevere and sit every Saturday and Sunday and start
right in there and you will be successful with it. I've enjoyed the
opportunity to have a chance to speak with you and I really apologize
for the run around that we gave you initially but I am glad we were able
to get it worked out.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Thank you so much and since you were in Court One you know where I am
going and I appreciate it.