J.C. Roe Center serves 700 suspended students in first year

July 17--WILMINGTON -- Mornings at the J.C. Roe Center start with Principal Glen Locklear's coming over the intercom, setting the tone for the day.

Kim Cook, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, spent much of the spring at Roe observing classes. She remembers Locklear kicking off one February school day with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.

"I personally appreciated hearing those words of wisdom that morning; I needed it," Cook said. "The students that listen to it really take it in and value it."

The J.C. Roe Center opened eleven months ago to accommodate New Hanover County Schools students who have been suspended or need time to readjust to the classroom. In its first year, more than 700 students attended. Around 100 were so-called "permanent" students on long-term suspension or re-entering school after treatment, while 607 came for short-term suspensions.

But the number that matters most to Locklear is 84 percent. That's the proportion of short-term suspended students who did their time at Roe and were not suspended a second time -- 510 in all. Of the 50 long-term and Transitions students who returned to home schools, just one reappeared at Roe for a disciplinary issue. As Locklear puts it to students, "'I want to see you around town, I want to see you at the mall, but I don't want to see you back at Roe'."

Year one at Roe threw challenges at school leaders, and finding out the school's real impact will mean tracking student progress over years. But administrators are hopeful this year's low recidivism rate shows Roe is doing what it is designed to do -- catching kids before they drop out or criminalize themselves out of school.

"I think that J.C. Roe has served a valuable purpose," said Ed Higgins, chairman of the county school board. "We're going to have to wait a year or two to see whether it succeeds in keeping kids in school ... It's not something that will reveal itself in one year."

'Restorative justice'

A call from a parent brought Vance Williams to Roe.

Williams runs Advance Youth Outreach at 1310 Dock St. After a mother asked him to intervene with her son -- recently sent to Roe -- Williams started working with the boy in class. He taught him coping techniques, met with him after school, rewarded him for improved behavior.

"Yes, he's rough around the edges, like 85 percent of my clients are rough around the edges," Williams said. "That's why I do what I do."

By the end of the school year Williams was mentoring up to four Roe students a week. Locklear said Williams was one of 30 regular volunteers at the school.

"I could pick up the phone and say, 'Vance, so-and-so is having a bad day'. It was almost like having an additional staff member," Locklear said. "I think the key to that success is our linkage to the community."

Roes' volunteers and teachers face a challenging task.

Police reports show the New Hanover County Sheriffs Office and Wilmington Police Department responded to about 30 incidents on campus last school year, including seven assaults on school employees or volunteers, two assaults on government officials and two fights. On Dec. 5 someone brought an axe or hatchet onto campus, according to a WPD report, and at least two arrests were made on campus: one on Dec. 2 for assault on a school employee and one on Feb. 21 for possession of marijuana.

The N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice also received 18 juvenile complaints for 13 different students last school year at J.C. Roe, according to data provided by the department. Juvenile complaints are filed when a youth is suspected of committing a crime, and can lead to court action.

Central to Roe's mission is the concept of restorative justice -- having students recognize what they did wrong, how it hurt others and how they can fix it. Helping teachers integrate restorative justice into lessons is a big part of Cook's work at the school.

"The best resource that we have are excellent teachers working under difficult circumstances," Cook said. "In order to get to the academic content, you have to cut through layers of complex emotional circumstances, and the teachers are doing a lot of emotional labor on an everyday basis. And I'd imagine it's quite exhausting."

Williams wants to see Roe give students more vocational training and creative outlets to help find areas where they excel.

"If I concentrate only on their behavior, everything is punitive, and we can never have that breakthrough and develop a relationship," Williams said. "Locklear has the right spirit to get the job done, and he has the guts. ... If he had the right staff -- as far as three people per room and hall monitoring -- they would be more successful."

Staffing concerns

Several stakeholders agree Roe needs more staff and volunteers to help students with difficult emotional issues.

Aquilla Washington said her son Zimeer, 13, was sent to Roe in February after fighting with teachers at Williston Middle School.

A month after he arrived at Roe, Zimeer broke a window and Washington claims he was subsequently Tased by a school liaison officer. A New Hanover County Sheriff's Office spokesman said he did not have a record of deputy discharging a Taser in March and referred the StarNews to the Wilmington Police Department. A WPD spokeswoman said the department would not comment on incidents involving juveniles.

Washington wonders if having more staff at Roe would have put someone in that classroom to talk Zimeer down, before things escalated.

"He got more aggressive since he's been at J.C. Roe, more disrespectful toward adults, including myself," she said. "They need more help. With the principal, I'm not doubting that he can do it, he needs help. He needs guidance, he needs a team that can help him."

Locklear's team will grow this year when Roe gets its first assistant principal, thanks to a $78,000 appropriation in the district's budget. Superintendent Tim Markley had asked for another $63,000 for a high school transition teacher, but that did not make the final budget.

"Finances being what they are, we did what we could do," Higgins said.

Roe has 11 teachers, plus social workers, teacher assistants and support staff. Two Roe teachers left after this year (one retired and one was promoted to an assistant principalship within the district), but both jobs will be filled. Locklear said at no time last year did the school hold more than about 140 students, allowing for class sizes of roughly 12.

Next year elementary students in the Transition program -- for kids returning from treatment -- will move to Lake Forest Academy on South15th Street, freeing up two classrooms at Roe.

"I think if you ask every principal in the district, they'll tell you they want more teachers," Locklear said. "I think we currently have the staff to meet our needs."

Since the idea for the J.C. Roe Center surfaced two years ago, the school has had vocal critics. Locklear, Williams and Cook all said they'd like those critics to jump into the effort.

"We can't just be armchair critics and say from a distance that the school is contributing to the school-to-prison-pipeline, or this school is waste of country resources, or whatever the criticisms are," Cook said. "If you're worried about the school and you want to criticize it, you have to get close to it first. Come to the school, learn about what's happening, volunteer at the school and become a part of it."

Reporter Cammie Bellamy can be reached at 910-343-2339 or Cammie.Bellamy@StarNewsOnline.com.

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