Letters to the Editor for Thursday, March 18, 2010

Writer: At-risk youth are forgotten
I read the March 15 headline on The News & Advance Web site relaying the Campbell County Schools budget fracas with some disdain and disbelief. The headline read: “Plans pit Gladys school closure against employee pay cut.” Left out was the major detail that those plans include the most likely closing of a second school, the school at which I teach, my school: Fray Educational Center.

Since it seems that some folks in Campbell County are unwilling to recognize or to care about the closing of our school for “at-risk” youth, I am writing to speak out on behalf of Fray. Having taught at Fray for 11 years now, I am more than a little invested in the school remaining open. Yet as saddened and troubled as I and the faculty and staff of Fray may be at the prospect of our school closing its doors for the last time, it is our student body I worry for the most. For if Fray should close they will have no where else to go. There is no other alternative school in the county we can bus them to.

As adults and professionals we staff members will be able to find our way or make a new one in life. Yet our students’ futures remain uncertain. Contrary to the many baseless attitudes and opinions thrown about describing our school as a den of drugs and thuggery, our school houses students — children, not hoodlums and career criminals. These are the same children that just days, weeks before coming to Fray were on the basketball team at Altavista, the honor roll at Brookville and, were it not for a mistake or a few, would be there still. Aside from the numerous students who come to Fray and decide to stay here because it is where they believe they can be the most successful, most of our students eventually return to their home schools within a semester or two. Each year we produce a graduating class that saves many students from becoming just another addition to the county’s dropout rate.

If I did not have hope in these students; if I didn’t believe that they are worthwhile and can go on to live worthwhile lives, I would have quit eleven years ago. I see things differently since coming to work with the students of Fray. Where some see “at risk,” I see potential. Where some see failure, I see resilience. Where some see hopelessness, I see hope.

I understand the current fiscal climate our country, county and state face but our students are more than just statistics and are just as important as students from Brookville, William Campbell, Rustburg or Altavista. And as unconscionable as cutting teachers’ pay may be, shouldn’t it be just as unconscionable to protect some teachers salaries, jobs and schools at the expense of the education of some of the most needy students within our school system? I implore the Campbell County School Board to not leave the students of Fray Educational Center — our students — behind.
DAVID WOOLDRIDGE
Lowesville

Editor’s note: Wooldridge is a social studies teacher at Fray Education Center in Campbell County.