Burdens multiply at a challenged high school
Burdens multiply at a challenged high school
Plus: 1/5 of N.C. residents don't plan to take Covid vaccine, poll says; Electric-vehicle maker puts North American HQ in Charlotte; Mack Brown's daughter wins big on Jeopardy
The Charlotte Ledger is an e-newsletter that provides smart and essential news to Charlotte. We have free and paid subscription plans. Sign up today:
LEDGER IN-DEPTH
‘The hardest year of my life’: At high-poverty Garinger, students and families work to overcome Covid-related hardships
Enrollment at Garinger High School has dropped for the last four years, and some community members are looking for ways to make it appealing to more families, including creating a partial magnet program at the school. This has been a tough year for many Garinger students, including senior Anisha Sunuwar (pictured).
by Cristina Bolling
Anisha Sunuwar is a motivated 18-year-old senior at Garinger High School who’s active in student government and the National Honor Society. She’s taking advanced-level courses and working 20 hours a week at a restaurant to help support her family with whom she immigrated from Nepal 10 years ago.
Covid has pushed her to a breaking point this year.
First, she and her brother got sick with the virus over the summer. Then, her mom came down with a stomach ailment that doctors are still figuring out. Anisha is having to juggle remote learning, work and shuttling her mom to emergency rooms and doctor visits to serve as her translator.
A few months ago, with the financial and family stress mounting and missing the motivation and support she gets from walking into school each day, she says she considered dropping out.
What’s keeping her in school, she says, is a singular experience: a visit to the poultry plant where her mother works, to tell the supervisors that her mom needed to quarantine due to Covid.
“It pushed me to not want to work in a place like where she worked — to do better. To keep staying in school,” Anisha says during an early-morning phone call while waiting for her first period class to begin.
“This has been the hardest year of my life.”
Before the pandemic, Garinger High School was already a school with big challenges.
It’s one of the highest-poverty high schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system, and nearly one-third of its students are learning English as a second language.
It suffers from high staff turnover, a graduation rate of 67% and consistent enrollment declines over the last four years, in part because some neighborhood families are choosing other schools for their kids.
CMS data shows Garinger’s enrollment is 1,498 — a 13% drop compared with last year — which shows the biggest decline of any high school in the district. However, Garinger’s principal, Sharon Bracey, said she puts Garinger’s 2020-21 enrollment at 1,666 — which would be a 3% drop from last year. She says she’s looking into why there’s a numbers discrepancy.
This year, Garinger’s challenges are mounting higher. Teachers are struggling to keep students engaged, knowing that for some, this year will set them back or even keep them from graduating.
Anisha says remote learning is also taking a toll on her friends, some of whom, she says, are also having a tough time.
“They’re not as motivated as they would be if we were at school, because there is nobody to push them. If we were in school, we would have counselors, teachers and our superiors pushing us to do better,” she says.
“Here at home, we don’t have anybody,” she says. “Being in a foreign family, it’s hard, too, because (our parents) don’t understand what we’re doing.”
Greg Asciutto has taught English at Garinger for the last seven years, and from his trailer classroom where for now he teaches virtually, he sees Garinger’s challenges first-hand.
He thinks about the students he’s teaching remotely this year. There’s the boy who had a 3.5 GPA but now lives with a sister and lacks reliable internet. He knows many of the kids he teaches have big challenges at home and aren’t as focused as they would be if they were sitting in his classroom.
Even his AP English class, which tends to have more motivated kids, has had three kids “drop off the face of the Earth,” said Asciutto, 28. Now, the class is down to 11 students.
He tries to reach out to parents, but in many cases, it bears no results.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” he says. “But what else can you do?”
Greg Asciutto, left, has been teaching English at Garinger High School for the last seven years. This photo was taken in 2018, when he was honored as one of CMS’s teachers of the year. These days, Asciutto is teaching virtually out of an empty classroom because CMS high school students are learning remotely due to Covid. (Photo by Nancy Pierce/CMS)
From jewel of CMS to high poverty
Garinger was a jewel of the CMS system when it opened in September 1959.
Journalists at the time described the building as “an extremely modernistic structure” with a brightly-colored library exterior that resembled a merry-go-round. Alumni say they recall Time magazine writing about the school’s design on its pages.
The year Garinger opened was Charlotte’s third year of what was then referred to as “token integration.” An Associated Press article from the day the school opened reported: “One negro student entered the new Garinger high school in Charlotte without incident, the only integration in the city this year.”
The area surrounding Garinger was almost all white in 1959, and the school remained predominantly white until 1971, after federal courts ordered Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to implement a district-wide busing plan to put into practice what the famous Brown v. Board of Education case had ordered more than 15 years before.
And so Black students, many from west Charlotte neighborhoods, began being bused into Garinger.
In the decades that followed, Charlotte grew and its demographics changed. The city’s east side began attracting new Hispanic immigrants, and more Black families also moved into areas around Garinger.
Garinger High School is in east Charlotte, at Eastway Drive and Sugar Creek Road.
In 1999, busing ended when a federal judge ordered CMS to stop using race as a factor in student assignment plans. With students attending their neighborhood schools, Garinger’s student body looked starkly different than it did when the school opened in 1959.
Today, Garinger is 47% Hispanic, 41% Black, 6% Asian and 4% white.
Diversity as a selling point
Asciutto wears another hat besides his teacher role. He’s on the education committee for a community group called CharlotteEAST, a non-profit advocacy group for the city’s east side.
He and other members of CharlotteEAST have been looking at ways for Garinger to become more jewel-like once again. One of their ideas is to have CMS start a partial magnet program at Garinger, as other schools in struggling neighborhoods have successfully done.
Having a partial magnet program, in which some students would focus on a specific theme, would bring motivated students from other areas of the city to Garinger. It could also attract more students in the neighborhoods around Garinger who currently choose to attend other schools.
This year, however, is a tough time to make big strides toward that goal, with school officials grappling with educating students in a pandemic.
Former CMS school board member Louise Woods is with Asciutto on the CharlotteEAST quest, and she, too, thinks a magnet program could be a key to strengthening Garinger.
Woods says Garinger has long suffered from a lack of support from the school district, dating back to when busing ended and Garinger’s student body became largely poor and minority.
“There was no effort, that I could see, to strengthen it,” she says. “There has not been the attention given that should have been given to help build on the strength of the community and to give them a fighting chance to attract the most active families.”
The diversity of cultures at Garinger could be a real selling point, Woods says.
A magnet program could change the energy in the school, inspire more neighborhood families to enroll and make teachers want to stay. Students’ cultures would be celebrated, and their strengths built upon, Woods said.
“With vision, (Garinger) could really become an international showcase,” she said.
Showing ‘Garinger grit’ this year
Bracey has been Garinger’s principal since 2019, but she’s been on staff at the school for the last seven years.
She believes some of the enrollment decline this year could be because fewer families are moving into the school zone during the pandemic. Garinger’s student population includes some transient families who might, say, make east Charlotte their first stop when moving here but then transfer to another area of town later.
“People have been staying put, and there hasn’t been as much movement, so there hasn’t been our typical enrollment,” Bracey said.
Bracey said her staff has been “very intentional” in making phone calls to parents or home visits to students who aren’t showing up on online classes or engaging as they should.
“Those home visits help us to be able to identify what some of the barriers are for students,” Bracey said. “We know some students have assumed some work responsibilities … We encounter that more now than we would in a typical school year.”
The pandemic, she said, has made her and her staff “see the gravity of this work.”
“In this particular year, we know if they’re not engaged in school, there’s probably a really, really good reason why,” such as students logging long work hours to keep their families financially afloat.
“That’s what we call our ‘Garinger grit,’” Bracey says. “Our kids come from all kinds of backgrounds. This year, I think we see a little more of that.”
Bracey said she knows community members want to help find ways to boost the school. Telling the school’s story is important, too, she said.
“We’re hearing the community, and maybe we need to toot our horn a little about the positive things,” she said. One example she gives is a new greenhouse that was built on campus last year, that will boost science and horticulture studies.
“There are families that are considering Garinger and want to know what the true Garinger experience is,” Bracey said. “I think it’s a process for parents to explore all our options. We just want to make sure the neighborhood option is not off the table, just because of what people have heard.”
This greenhouse was built behind Garinger High School last year. Principal Sharon Bracey says it presents an opportunity for the school to work with community partners “to be able to show students how there are options in horticulture or within business and marketing and sustainable food products.”
Support from alums and community
For all its challenges, Garinger does have community members who love and care for the school and are working hard to keep supporting it this year.
For example, the Garinger Education Foundation was formed in 2014 by Garinger alumni with the mission of funding scholarships for Garinger graduates to attend 2- and 4-year colleges. To date, the foundation has raised more than $1M in scholarships and more than 97% of donations directly support Garinger students through college scholarships and faculty/student enrichment programs. Almost 90% of the foundation’s funds go to help Garinger graduates pursuing post-secondary education.
The foundation has a variety of scholarships, including a joint scholarship program with Central Piedmont Community College and a public-private scholarship partnership with UNC Charlotte and Indian Land-based tech company Red Ventures for four scholarships awarded to Garinger graduates each year to attend the UNCC College of Computing and Informatics.
Since 2014, some 40 degrees have been earned by Garinger Education Foundation scholars, said Margaret Genkins, vice president of the Garinger Education Foundation.
This month, the foundation gave each staff member a $10 bill and a letter of thanks. It did the same last spring after schools went virtual, mailing envelopes to each staff member’s home.
Jack Brayboy, a former TV newsman in both Philadelphia and Charlotte and a Garinger class of ’76 graduate, is the foundation’s chairman. He was one of the kids who was bused across town to attend Garinger — an experience he says shaped him in profound ways.
“It gave me an opportunity to see a whole dynamic there of white folks and Black folks getting to know and understand each other,” Brayboy said. “Those are the life lessons that certainly paved the way for me to do better as I got older.”
Dreams for the future
Anisha Suduwar, the Garinger student, has an added challenge as her senior year begins to draw to a close.
She’s applying to college and is desperate for scholarships that will help her achieve her dream of being a nurse. She’s been inspired by the nurses she’s seen caring for her mother over the last several months.
“I want to be able to provide for my mom and not worry so much about money,” she said.
She said her teachers at Garinger have been “so wonderful,” and she’s grateful for ones like her school soccer coach, who helped her fill out FAFSA forms to apply for federal college loans.
Staying motivated would be easier, she says, if she could have more contact with the teachers who support her. For now, she’s having to draw from within herself to find the motivation.
“I just want my mom to be proud of her little girl.”
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
Editor’s note: This article is part of a collaborative series examining Covid-19’s economic effect on black and Latino communities in Charlotte. The series is produced through a collaboration among WFAE, The Charlotte Ledger, Q City Metro and La Noticia. The effort is funded in part by the Facebook Journalism Project.
In brief
New Arrival: Electric vehicle manufacturer Arrival plans to locate its 150-worker North American HQ in South End and invest about $3M in Charlotte. The British-based company announced a new 240-job factory in Rock Hill earlier this year. The company is receiving no government incentives for the HQ. (Biz Journal)
Vaccine skepticism: In a poll of nearly 1,400 North Carolina residents, 41% said they would take an FDA-approved Covid vaccine, 21% said they wouldn’t, and 39% said it depends or they weren’t sure. About 22% of respondents disagreed with the statement “The FDA is trustworthy when it comes to approving the Covid-19 vaccine,” and 34% said they thought the vaccine might be more dangerous than Covid itself. Whites, men and urban residents were the most likely to say they would take a vaccine. (Elon University)
‘Curfew’ starts: North Carolina’s new curfew rules begin tonight. Restaurants and most retailers are required to close at 10, and on-site alcohol sales stop at 9. Residents are supposed to stay in their homes after 10, but there are plenty of exceptions for work and essential activities. (Ledger)
Charlotte office outlook: Some of Charlotte’s largest companies are not making decisions about their future need for office space until employees are back at work, brokers say. “Corporate employers have to get back into the office before they can make any business decisions on their office,” Chase Monroe, Carolinas market director for JLL, told the Charlotte Business Journal.
Apartment settlement: The former owner and manager of Charlotte’s Lake Arbor apartments in west Charlotte agreed to a $457,500 settlement to address claims they collected rent despite poor health and safety conditions. “Attorneys for the tenants called the settlement a win for their clients and a warning to landlords who neglect health and safety violations on their properties,” the Observer reported. It ends a class-action lawsuit.
Urgent care: Atrium Health has opened a new urgent care facility in Indian Land, S.C. It will be called Atrium Health Urgent Care — Red Stone, at 9623 Red Stone Drive, and will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, Atrium said.
Ledger holiday party: Reminder that The Ledger’s drop-in online holiday party for our community of paying subscribers is Thursday, Dec. 17, from 5-7 p.m. We’ve arranged for drink specials 🍺 🍷 , with delivery anywhere in Mecklenburg County — but as you’re in your house, you’re also welcome to BYOB. It’s on a tech platform called Wonder and is more interactive than Zoom. Details available here.
UNC jeopardy: The daughter of UNC football coach Mack Brown won nearly $23,000 on the game show “Jeopardy!” — one of the final episodes taped before last month’s death of host Alex Trebek. In Final Jeopardy, Katherine Ryan, CEO of a nonprofit foundation, correctly identified the nation that “resisted naval sieges by the Berbers in 1429, the Ottomans in 1565 & Axis WWII air assaults.” It’s Malta. (Sports Illustrated)
Correction
An item in Wednesday’s newsletter gave incorrect information on the estimated start date of passenger service for the Gold Line streetcar extension. It is expected to start sometime in early 2021, the city says, but not in January.
Programming note: Ledger editor Tony Mecia was a guest on “Charlotte Talks With Mike Collins” on 90.7 WFAE yesterday, for a discussion of Charlotte’s economy. Other panelists were Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo; and Chuck McShane, senior vice president of economic research at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. The discussion is available online.
Need to sign up for this e-newsletter? We offer free and paid subscription plans:
The Charlotte Ledger is an e-newsletter and website publishing timely, informative, and interesting local business-y news and analysis Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, except holidays and as noted. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing, or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.
Got a news tip? Think we missed something? Drop us a line at editor@cltledger.com and let us know.
Like what we are doing? Feel free to forward this along and to tell a friend.
Searchable archives available at https://charlotteledger.substack.com/archive.
Social media: On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Nab an “Essential Charlotte Ledger” T-shirt or hoodie.
Sponsorship information: email editor@cltledger.com.
Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Reporting intern: David Griffith