# Caswell County Schools

Caswell County Schools is a PK–12 graded school district serving Caswell County, North Carolina. Its six schools serve 3,012 students as of the 2010–2011 school year.

## Student demographics

For the 2010–2011 school year, Caswell County Schools had a total population of 3,012 students and 215.06 teachers on a (FTE) basis. This produced a student-teacher ratio of 14.01:1. That same year, out of the student total, the gender ratio was 53% male to 47% female. The demographic group makeup was: White, 53%; Black, 36%; Hispanic, 7%; American Indian, 0%; and Asian/Pacific Islander, 0% (two or more races: 4%). For the same school year, 66.98% of the students received free and reduced-cost lunches.

## Governance

The primary governing body of Caswell County Schools follows a council–manager government format with a seven-member Board of Education appointing a superintendent to run the day-to-day operations of the system. The school system is part of the North Carolina State Board of Education's Fifth District.

### Board of education

The seven members of the Board of Education generally meet on the second and fourth Mondays of each month. The members are elected by the district to staggered four-year terms. In April 2022, the members of the board were:
* Wayne Owen (Chair), District 2
* Gladys Garland (Vice-Chair), District 3
* Mel Battle, At-large
* Donna Hudson, District 5
* Trudy Blackwell, District 4
* Tracy Stanley, At-large
* Vennie Beggarly, District 1

### Superintendent

Its superintendents have included Douglas Barker, who retired on June 30, 2013. He became superintendent in 2001 replacing the retiring Skip Rowland. Barker had been a principal and an assistant superintendent in the Henderson County Public Schools.

## Integration history

In the 20th century, during the era of school segregation in the United States, many African American students in Caswell County attended Caswell County Training School, which was renamed Caswell County High School in the 1960s. Vanessa Siddle Walker's 1996 book, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South, provides detailed insights into this school, now a designated site on the National Register of Historic Places in Caswell County.
By the end of the 1960s, Caswell County's public schools were beginning to fully integrate. A decade and a half earlier in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In a later decision by the Court in May 1955 known as Brown II, school districts were given the ambiguous order to desegregate "with all deliberate speed." Like many school boards in the South at the time, the Caswell County Board of Education interpreted the Court's ambiguity in a manner that served to delay, obstruct, and slow the process of racially integrating its schools.
The Board of Education's resistance to integration had already been emboldened by North Carolina's passage of the Pupil Assignment Act in April 1955. The legislation gave county school boards full school placement authority. Driven by the act's power, the Pearshall Plan's passage, and the prevailing anti-integration sentiment of the white community, the school district kept assigning children to schools in a segregated manner.
In response to these developments, fifteen local African American parents presented a petition to the school district in August 1956 calling for the abolition of segregation, which the board refused to consider. Undeterred, the parents organized protests that included the NAACP. A federal lawsuit was subsequently filed in December 1956 asking for the immediate desegregation of Caswell County and North Carolina schools.
In August 1957, 43 local students, many of whom were plaintiffs via their parents in the federal court case, applied for admission to public schools that were closer to their homes than the segregated ones they had been assigned. The school board denied their applications and continued to reject them through 1962. Nevertheless, the federal lawsuit kept moving forward.
In December 1961, U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Stanley ruled that two brothers, Charlie and Fred Saunders, could promptly attend Archibald Murphey Elementary School, a now-closed formerly all-white school near Milton. When the new semester began in January, however, they did not present themselves for enrollment. The Ku Klux Klan had sent a threatening letter to the Saunders family previously. According to an affidavit submitted by the children's father C.H. Saunders Sr., the KKK's threats caused him to miss a school board reassignment hearing ordered by the judge in August 1961 prior to his final judgment. Saunders also conveyed that he would be agreeable to transferring schools if his children's protection at Murphey Elementary could be assured.
A year after the Saunders decision, Stanley ruled that the school district had been improperly administering the Pupil Assignment Act. In December 1962, he told the school boards of Caswell County and the city of Durham to allow every schoolchild complete freedom of choice regarding school placement. On January 22, 1963, sixteen African American schoolchildren enrolled in four of the county's previously all-white schools.
On their first day of school, a group of white men harassed and threatened one of the parents, Jasper Brown, who was a local civil rights leader and farmer. He was pursued and menaced by the men as he drove home. After a rear-end collision, the other vehicle's driver emerged with a firearm. Fearing for his life, Brown shot and wounded two of the men in an exchange of fire before turning himself in to police. Due to the circumstances, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was soon informed of the incident.
Several months later, Brown was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and served 90 days in jail. While awaiting trial, white men bombed his yard. His four children and the 12 others who integrated the county's schools were physically threatened and emotionally abused throughout the semester. Despite requests from the NAACP and concerned families, no police protection was provided. Furthermore, the Board of Education refused to arrange school bus transportation.
By late 1967, only 57 African American children out of a Black student population of approximately 3,000 were attending integrated public schools in Caswell County. While there had been some faculty integration, the less than two percent enrollment rate in essence preserved segregation. The school district's integration plan had not fostered sufficient desegregation. Its "freedom of choice" plan put the onus of integration on individual African American students and parents, who had to opt to cross the color line themselves. If they did so, they faced social stigma, severe discrimination, and other hardships. Consequently, many families, though supportive of integration efforts, chose to keep their children safe in valued Black schools such as Caswell County High School.
The school district's low integration rate resulted in the U.S. Office of Education citing the county in 1966 as one of seven in the state that were not in compliance with its civil rights Title IV guidelines. The bureau began taking steps to cut off federal funding. The school district was not in full compliance with federal integration standards until 1969. In that year, the Caswell County Board of Education implemented a plan for complete desegregation after Judge Stanley ordered the school district in August 1968 to integrate starting in the 1969–1970 school year.

## Member schools

Caswell County Schools has six schools ranging from pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade. The six schools are one high school, one middle school, and four elementary schools.

### High school

* Bartlett Yancey High School (in Yanceyville)

### Middle schools

* N.L. Dillard Middle School (in Yanceyville)

### Elementary schools

* North Elementary School (in Providence)
* Oakwood Elementary School (in Yanceyville)
* South Elementary School (in Mebane)
* Stoney Creek Elementary School (in Reidsville)