Nash, Edgecombe leaders call for demerger of school districts down county lines

Momentum is growing for a shake-up in how the school districts in the Rocky Mount area are divided.

Since the 1990s the Nash County school district has included Rocky Mount, but leaders from both Nash and Edgecombe counties are now calling to change that.

“I feel that it’s something that we need to do,” Edgecombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Leonard Wiggins said.

The comments came in a meeting between Edgecombe County and the Nash County school board, where Nash leaders asked for an action plan for the move.

“There’s that one elusive word that we read in the newspaper, we see it, but we don’t seem to have a lot of information,” Nash County Schools District 5 representative Chris Bissette said. “That’s that favorite word of demerger.”

So how did it get to this point, and why?

Nash County Schools District 2 representative Dean Edwards told WRAL News that the maps last changed in 1992, when one side became the Nash-Rocky Mount district, sending children who live in Edgecombe County to schools run by Nash. Edgecombe County committed to pay the Nash district to educate those students.

Since then, Edwards said there’s been an effort in the legislature to divide school districts down county lines, and in 2016, that culminated in North Carolina Senate Bill 382. Because state lawmakers ratified the bill in June 2016, it’s an agreement stating that a demerger of the districts would be triggered if Edgecombe County should fail to make its payments to Nash County.

“They are to pay that amount every year, they’re to make their obligations and there’s times where it has appeared that it’s been tough for that to happen,” Edwards said.

Edwards told WRAL News that, at this point, he believed the demerger would be the best option for both districts.

The move would switch hundreds of students who are currently in Nash County Schools over to the responsibility of the Edgecombe district.

That decision would have to be made by the counties’ boards of commissioners, and while it hasn’t happened yet, the Edgecombe County board chair has stated his support for throwing out the old map.

“It’s causing us to pay about 11% of capital improvement, for everything that you do in the county, on schools that our children may never attend,” Wiggins said.

During the meeting, Edgecombe County Manager Eric Evans said the county has hired a full-time analyst to draw up a plan for a demerger. Starting next week, a series of community meetings are scheduled to talk with the public about the potential change.

“I’m looking for us to finally stand up and face the dragon and say, 'Hey, it just appears that this has been a topic that nobody wants to face head-on, but we really need to,'” Edwards said.

The first community meeting on the potential demerger is set for the evening of Tuesday, May 3 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Rocky Mount.