Town hall about public schools ends well
Dec. 10—HIGH POINT — A town hall organized to let High Point residents direct questions at the superintendent of Guilford County Schools appeared to satisfy most of the people who attended, the organizer said.
Superintendent Whitney Oakley either answered the questions or admitted when she didn't know the answer and promised to get back to the questioner with information, said Dell McCormick, the executive director of the Macedonia Family Resource Center, where the town hall was held Wednesday night.
"She was very, very, very transparent," McCormick said.
McCormick's assessment of the meeting contrasts with how he felt about a previous first town hall about local schools that he organized on Sept. 27. A number of people who came to that meeting were frustrated because the GCS administrators who came — Oakley was not among them — would not answer questions such as whether High Point schools get their fair share of resources compared to Greensboro schools.
When asked about the allocation of resources, Oakley said the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and the Guilford County Board of Education have been guided since 2019 by a master facilities plan that lists projects in the order of the schools in the worst shape and most in need of repair regardless of which part of the district they are in, said Iyanna Salters, the AmeriCorps Vista volunteer for the resource center. Salters moderated the town hall for McCormick. People mostly were happy with that answer, she said.
