Well, over crowding has always been a condition that I think West
Charlotte has had to deal with, and it became even more of a condition
after integration. The challenge of getting new buildings and renovated
buildings was always something that
Page 19was on the
minds of folks at West Charlotte, and I think probably will always be
there. That's certainly something that never goes away, is that
challenge of over crowding and the challenge of providing adequate space
for instruction. Getting involvement from parents is difficult at any
school. It's a particular challenge at a school like West Charlotte
because most of the white parents who are involved there and whose
students go there live really on the other side of town, so to speak. So
getting them involved in and coming to meetings and feeling a part of
the school is difficult. Many black families have the same difficulty in
terms of either being single parent families or having situations where
both parents work. This constant struggle to keep parents involved in
the school and keep parents active in the school family was certainly
something that we continued to struggle with there. The other problem
that I remember in particular during my time was Charlotte is such a
growing community, and Charlotte is always opening new high schools with
new facilities, with new campuses, with new resources, and the best and
brightest teachers tend to be drawn away from aging schools like a West
Charlotte to go to the new school at Providence or the new school at
Vance where they have the latest equipment and more space and new
facilities. A constant struggle is to keep bright teachers and the best
teachers in a school like West Charlotte as opposed to losing them to
the new fancy schools that are always being built in a community that's
growing like Charlotte is. That was a constant struggle and continues to
be a struggle because there's something about the new school that
attracts teachers and particularly teachers who have developed a
reputation for being excellent. That was one of the problems when I was
at West Charlotte and my children were there was watching some of your
best faculty members slip away to other schools and be drawn away. So
I'd say
Page 20those were some of the major problems.
Probably the biggest problem at West Charlotte is trying to win a state
championship in football. West Charlotte has a great tradition in
football and is the scourge of the Charlotte community in terms of
football. I mean, they beat everybody, and they beat them good on the
local level, but they've had a great deal of problems winning state
championships. They've gone to state championship games many years
running. In fact, when I was on the school committee we went to the
state championship football game, and we decided that we would print up
some bumper stickers that said, "West Charlotte state champs," and we
would sell the immediately after the state championship football game in
Chapel Hill and raise money for the school committee. So I printed up
the bumper stickers at my own expense, and I recruited a bunch of people
so we could cover all the exits at Chapel Hill on the West Charlotte
side of the field, and went to the state championship football game and
Northern Durham blew our doors off. So we ended up with a bunch of
bumper stickers we couldn't sell. Winning that state championship in
football continues to be—they have won it one year—but they've been more
times to the state championship football game than any school in the
state, including schools that have won the state championship, but they
haven't come away with the gold medal very often. I'd say that's
probably the biggest problem. Winning that state championship in
football.