Call this conversation for a new location of E.E. Smith High School a polarizing dilemma for the school with a rich history and proud heritage.
Take it from its home district near the Seabrook, Broadell, Eccles Park and Evans Hill neighborhoods — where the school holds such testimony for alumni — or relocate the school on property outside the gate of Fort Liberty?
“It is not that I believe that the Stryker Golf Course on Fort Liberty site is the unequivocally correct choice for the new E.E. Smith High School,” says Jacquelyn Brown, one of five Cumberland County Board of Education members who on Jan. 11 voted to recommend the military base site for the Cumberland Board of County Commissioners to decide. “It is that I believe that the site is an adequate candidate location for the new school. The board was asked to evaluate the Stryker Golf Course as a potential location for the building of the new E.E. Smith High School, and I found the site to be a good candidate based on logistical convenience to the students that it would serve, the space needed to build a modern 21st Century high school and the commitment by Fort Liberty to offer a viable piece of property for the building.”
Also recommending Fort Liberty as the proposed location were school board members Greg West, Donna Vann, Nathan Warfel and Alicia Chisolm. Board members in opposition were Chairwoman Deanna Jones, Carrie Sutton and Judy Musgrave. Susan Williams was not present for the vote, but she told CityView this week she was in support of recommending the military base as a location for a new E.E. Smith High School.
Those school board members in support of the military golf course as the proposed location took their voting queues on Jan. 11 from Kevin Coleman, associate superintendent of Auxiliary Services for the school system, who told the school board the 71-year-old high school at 1800 Seabrook Road is “structurally and educationally inadequate,” and does not meet ADA and building code requirements.
The ‘why’ of closing E.E. Smith
Coleman provided CityView with more detail.
“E.E. Smith High School does not meet the current North Carolina Department of Public Instruction recommendations for the academic space profiles of a 21st Century High School,” Coleman said Wednesday. “Because the main portion of the building was constructed in 1953, standards and building codes have changed immensely throughout the years. Over the years, we have made numerous enhancements and expansions to the facility. We remain committed to ensuring that we adhere to the latest building codes and strive to meet the rigorous standards set forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act to the best of our abilities. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the age of the school poses growing challenges in our pursuit of these objectives.”
The school is a Nationally Certified STEM campus, Coleman said, and for those of us who don’t speak in acronyms, it means E.E. Smith is certified as a school of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“It has a rigorous course of study in science, mathematics, engineering, arts and technology,” Coleman said. “The STEM Academy provides unique experiences in such areas as virtual and augmented reality systems, drone technology, auto mechanics, fire science and cyber security. Although there have been several additions to the building over the years, the current infrastructure and space restrictions make it difficult for these programs to thrive, grow and expand. As the district considers expansions to the academic offerings, another issue that limits E.E. Smith is the size of the campus.”
It covers, according to Coleman, 27 acres.
“This is far below the 70-100 acres of land that would be optimal for a comprehensive high school to serve approximately 1,600 students,” Coleman said. “This limitation has a negative effect on athletic events and extracurricular activities based on the limited space available. The Stryker site would be within the necessary land requirements and would be placed outside of the gates of Fort Liberty, similar to Bill Hefner Elementary and W.T. Brown Elementary.”
The Jan. 11 school board meeting became testy, particularly with longtime E.E. Smith High School die-hards, including three board members who say Fort Liberty is just not an acceptable location that’s too far from the E.E. Smith school district.
“We’re not saying this is the site,” an apparently disturbed CCS Superintendent Dr. Marvin Connelly Jr. said. “We’re bringing back a report. All we’re doing is responding to the direction of the board, not to the direction of Dr. Connelly.”
Fort Liberty is just a proposal, a recommendation for county commissioners Glenn Adams, Toni Stewart, Jeannette Council, Marshall Faircloth, Jimmy Keefe, Michael Boose and Veronica Jones to decide.
8 sites considered
“There were a total of eight sites that were evaluated for the feasibility of building a new high school,” Coleman tells CityView. “Of the choices that we evaluated, Stryker was the only location that was recommended by our engineering firm as a viable location for the new high school.”
Those eight locations considered, according to the school system, were:
“If this location is selected for the new E.E. Smith High School, we would work directly with Fort Liberty officials to develop a detailed plan of where the facility would be placed on the Stryker property to best utilize the space,” Coleman told CityView.
Wrong location, 3 board members say
Judy Musgrave, 75, a three-term school board member, is adamantly opposed to Fort Liberty as the proposed location, and she let the superintendent know in no uncertain terms she never will vote to see E.E. Smith on the military base or dismiss the school legacy.
“I voted no to send a proposal to the Cumberland County Board of County Commissioners because the Cumberland County Board of Education needed to present more than one possible site for consideration for construction of a new E.E. Smith High School,” Musgrave told CityView on Wednesday. “The auxiliary committee, along with the superintendent, previously said that several sites would be presented to the county commissioners for discussion and consideration, but they were not.
“The possible site should be within close proximity to the E.E. Smith community, which it now serves the rich E.E. Smith legacy. The idea of distance to Stryker Golf Course from the community, the fact that the wishes of the E.E. Smith alumni and community is not to have the school relocated to Stryker Golf Course on Fort Liberty, and several other issues that have been discussed before, played a role in my decision.
“I do not know precisely where on the golf course footprint the school would be built,” Musgrave said. “However, the board was shown a general area during a slide presentation. It was my expectation that the superintendent and his team would investigate other suitable sites along the Murchison Road corridor to present to the board of county commissioners as was done with Stryker Golf Course.”
Carrie Sutton, 66, has served on the school board 16 years.
“I have made it clear over the past year or so that I do not think it’s appropriate nor the best possible site for E.E. Smith High School,” Sutton told CityView. “I believe we can identify an area on the Murchison Road corridor or in the community that it currently is in for the potential high school. Just the idea of the school being on a military installation or federal property creates a lot of possible scenarios that would not be appropriate for a public school, especially a comprehensive high school.”
Deanna Jones, the school board chairwoman, says a new E.E. Smith High School should be in the school district neighborhood, too.
“Placing the school on Fort Liberty seems a little out of reach for people in the E.E. Smith community,” Jones told CityView. “I want the best for our students at E.E. Smith. I just think it would be more conducive if the school stayed somewhere within the Murchison Road corridor. The map that was presented at the meeting is the proposed site.”
County commissioners should be “afforded the opportunity to consider all eight sites,” Jones says, not Fort Liberty alone.
The chairwoman offers a reasonable point there.
'In the commissioners’ hands now'
Donna Vann, 63, says discussion about E.E. Smith and Fort Liberty have been a topic of conversation throughout her 10 years on the school board.
“I voted for the Stryker Golf Course location to be sent to the Cumberland County Commissioners as a viable piece of land that would work for a new E.E. Smith, state of the art high school,” Vann told CityView.
The 5-3 school board vote of Jan. 11, Vann says, was not a vote to build the school on Fort Liberty; rather, just a school board recommendation for county commissioners to consider.
“The decision will be the commissioners.” Vann said. “Most of the board members participated in a tour of proposed possible sites on February 13, 2023. From then until now, the only site left that Cumberland County Schools could suggest is Stryker. I believe there were close to 10 sites, but because of evaluation results of the sites, as well as one or two were neighborhoods only the commissioners can do eminent domain, something I am not in favor of. Stryker was the only site we could vote on to send.”
While Susan Williams, a three-term school board member, says she could not attend the Jan. 11 school board meeting, she supports the 5-3 recommendation of E.E. Smith High School on federal property.
“I would have voted in favor of if I had been present,” Williams, 66, told CityView. “The present site is land locked, and I believe a comprehensive high school should be placed on enough acreage to provide athletic fields and facilities. I do not know the specifics of exactly where the school would ‘sit,’ since this is the beginning stages of discussions. I would be happy to look at any other sites the commissioners think are suitable.”
You may be wondering about school board members Nathan Warfel, Alicia Chisolm and Greg West, all who supported the recommendation of Fort Liberty for the Cumberland Board of County Commissioners’ consideration.
Neither Warfel, Chisolm nor West responded to CityView’s request for comment.
‘Students my main concern’
“As a Cumberland County School Board member, I feel that we cannot continue to sit on our hands or keep kicking the can down the road on the issue of bringing E.E. Smith High School into the modern era,” Jacqueline Brown says. “The students need the updated facilities that this new school would provide to learn the skills they need for a competitive world. We cannot continue to argue over minute details that keep us from moving forward on any decision at all.
“Progress needs to be made, and that is why I voted on this site as being a good candidate for building of the new E.E. Smith High School. If other candidate sites are suggested to me, in which I feel would be a great fit for the new school, then I will put my support behind them.
“What I will not do is hinder progress over small details or disagreements while the students of this school district are desperately in need to be served,” Brown says. “The students are and will always be my main concern in issues such as this.”
Epilogue
You cannot help but feel for generations of E.E. Smith alumni who hold the current school so dear to their hearts, and the annual National Association of E.E. Smith Alumni and Friends celebration each Memorial Day Weekend with memories of after-school dances in the gymnasium, junior-senior proms and those Friday football nights under the lights along Seabrook Road.
The “best days of their lives,” so many will tell you, and even when they return to the old school, they know never to walk on the grass, because “Golden Bulls” pride is just way it always will be along 1800 Seabrook Road.
Yesteryear matters to the generations who have passed their way at the school along Seabrook Road, but today and tomorrow will matter for the E.E. Smith High School generations of young students to come, and that’s surely a measure of the dilemma.
“I wish I knew of a site that would be perfect, but I don’t,” Donna Vann says. “It is in the commissioners’ hands now.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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