Durham County Manager Wendell Davis thinks about his parents and siblings when he hears people say he doesn’t support education.
“My father and mother were sharecroppers. My father had an 8th grade education. There were 22 children, 11 boys and 11 girls, and even though they didn’t have an education, the single most important thing to my parents was that their kids understood the value and importance of an education,” Davis said during a recent interview with the Rev-elution. “So, having been on the tail end of 22 children, I’m number 21, I have older siblings who would often stay on me as a kid growing up telling me how important it was for me to go to school and study. They would say to me, when we were growing up, the only time we got to go to school was when it rained because my daddy was a sharecropper and they had to work on the farm.”
In February, Davis wrote a letter addressing that he felt publicly attacked by Durham County Commissioner Heidi Carter during a work session over a school budget presentation. In the letter, Davis alleged that Carter once told him, “You work for the board. When we tell you do something, you better grin and bear it.” Carter accused Davis of writing the letter to influence the outcome of the March 3 primary.
School board member Mike Lee, who is Black, posted a statement on Facebook defending Carter, who served as the former chair of the school board.
“Whatever budget recommendations the county made, no matter what it was, they voted with him. No questions,” Lee posted in a rant suggesting Davis maintained the support of a bloc of conservative Black commissioners when he was appointed in 2014. “If DPS needed $10 million, we got $3 million. We didn’t have a fighting chance.”
Davis hears his critics. Hearing he doesn’t support education conjures memories of his father, mother and 21 siblings, working as sharecroppers in Halifax County, the third lowest wealth county in the state. He talked about the blessing of leaving a county with one of the lowest performing school systems in the state to pursue a college education.
“I was an athlete. I got hurt. My mother told me after my last injury, keep your head in those books. So, I stayed in college for 10 years,” Davis said. “I acquired those four degrees in 10 years. Education has been the most transformative thing in my life given where I came from. Without it, I probably would still be back in Halifax County. No telling what I would be doing or what my life would be.”
Davis says he has struggled with the way people address issues related to education.
“When I came back to Durham, one of the things I had to endure was sitting and listening to the school board chair (Heidi Carter) make the argument that part of the reason the academic performance, the educational achievement gap, was the way it was for Durham Public Schools was because we had too many children that were on free and reduced lunch. So, what went to the heart for me was if you are poor you can’t learn,” Davis said.
“Let me just say that in Halifax County, from where I came from, every kid that I knew was on free or reduced lunch. Most of those kids went on to have successful lives. Many went to college. They became doctors, they became government professionals, they became business professionals. They became military officers. They became educators. They have families and many went on to educate their own children. You see progress and there is a lot to be celebrated from those humble beginnings,” Davis said.
Davis believes the only way to transform lives is through education. He believes Durham needs to have a serious talk regarding accountability. Durham is the third highest funded school district in the state, but when looking at educational outcomes of communities with similar demographics they are performing better than Durham.
“It’s been 59 years since the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, if you look at what is really happening today, Jamal is sitting here in this classroom and little Johnny is sitting beside him. In Durham, little Johnny is performing 6-7 points higher than the national average in respect to performing on grade level k-5. Jamal ain’t passing. These children of color, who make up the majority of the school district, who look like you and me, they’re not passing. They sit in the same classroom as white children. So, almost 60 years since Brown vs. Board of Education, why do we still have a separate and unequal system in a system that is integrated? How is it that white children can do so well and Black children can do so poorly? Those are questions in my mind that are worthy of being asked. Don’t talk to me about all these social challenges that we have in our life without addressing the root of the problem. And the root of the problem in sound, effecting quality education is getting these children and families better opportunities.”
Davis believes the answer to addressing crime and affordable housing concerns in Durham is in preparing students for the jobs in Durham.
“We’ve got the best economic situation that one could desire. We have the highest per capita income in this community in the state. Ranging somewhere north of 73 to 74,000 dollars. We also have some of the highest poverty rates. When you look at that tale of two cities, one has to ask yourself when I go to the chamber and I sit down with the CEO of the chamber, and he says on any given day in Durham you got 21,000 vacant jobs, but also at that same time we got 61, 6,200 people in the unemployment line looking for work.
“When I took this job, one of the first things I talked about minutes after sitting in my seat was the importance of us investing and developing our human capital. These young people, who we’re so openly concerned about, how do we develop skill sets so all these vacant jobs in Research Triangle Park, Treyburn Industrial Park that pay 60, 65 thousand, 70 thousand dollars a year, some that only require a high school diploma or technical institute degree, why don’t we build and develop a model to forge more of our kids coming out of the tougher parts of our community an opportunity to get that 65, 75 thousand dollar a year job with benefits, so that we don’t have to worry about things like affordable housing because they making that kind of money and can afford housing. We don’t have to worry about people showing up at the social services department because they need to get food. We don’t have to worry about whether or not we need to have specialized programs to keep their lights on when it's cold because they can pay their own light bill. We don’t have to worry about if we need to build a bigger courthouse with more courtrooms with jails because people who are working can make their own way in life.”
In 2006, Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning presided over a lawsuit challenging the state’s financing of public education. Unless the schools exceeded an overall passing rate of 55%, Manning ruled he would order the schools closed if their principals weren’t replaced and specific reforms set in place. At the time, Durham’s Hillside High School’s passing rate dropped from 47.3% to 44.5%, while Southern High School’s rate fell from 54.1 to 45.6%. Davis said the county has an obligation to fund education at a high level, but, as a community, we should also demand accountability.
Ten years ago, County Commissioner Ellen Reckhow envisioned replicating Geoffry Canady’s Harlem Children Zone in East Durham. The Harlem Children Zone is supported by a $145 million endowment with $75 million in annual revenue to support parenting workshops, a pre-school program, three charter schools, and child-oriented health programs for thousands of families living in the 100 blocks of Central Harlem.
“If having an East Durham Children Zone is the starting point, then put two-cent on the tax rate, which would generate at that time around six million, would give them something tangible and a worthwhile investment to give these kids a good head start,” Davis said. “That ain’t what we did. We set up a little data test and we run around the community and have a chance to talk about how we have an East Durham Children’s Initiative.”
Davis talked about his support of Universal Pre-K.
“When we started to have these talks about Universal Pre-K, the school board and Board of County Commissioners and city council all got to this resolution, it was Wendell Davis who looked at that situation and said if this is important to you, this is what we need to be doing because I agree. If we can keep them reading at grade level from the time, they start this educational pursuit until they enter 3rd grade, when they get to the 5th grade, they’re still on grade level, when they get to the 8th grade, they will still be on grade level. This is what I’m going to do. I’m recommending we put a penny on the tax rate to fund early childhood education and Universal Pre-K. Two years ago, when I did that, a penny was generating about 4.3 million dollars. We put the recommendation on the table. They called it forward and they said it wasn’t the politically right thing to do, but I forced their hands to do it because they said this was important. No one was putting money on the table. The city didn’t put any money on the table. So, who’s gonna put money on the table?
“Those are the types of investments we’re going to have to make to bridge this chasm we have in our community around economic and social disparities. It’s a long-term strategy. We gonna need a lot more money and some private investment some endowments,” Davis said.
Daddy was a sharecropper with 22 kids who helped on the farm. His siblings only went to school when it rained. They told Wendell to study hard because somebody in the family had to find a better way to make a living. It took him 10 years to obtain four degrees. It’s taken him a lifetime to fight on behalf of students labeled unteachable because of their parents' economic position.
Accountability is a tough word spoken by those who know there is a better way.