“This board is racially insensitive to the needs of the community due to the fact that 12 white teachers have been hired with the exception of one part-time black,” said Emma D, Carter, vice chairperson of the Northumberland NAACP Education Committee.

Carter also inquired about the hiring practices of the board asking about hiring guidelines for teachers, whether the superintendent or board makes hiring decisions, who interviews candidates, and whether input from the community is sought.

NAACP president Jim Long asked that one or two members from the NAACP be included in the recruiting system to “keep things fair.”

“If you’re racially insensitive to our community, we can’t trust you to educate our kids,” said Jarrell L. Howard.

Long and others had questions about what they perceived as two different sets of cheerleading squads, one made up of black students and one made up of white students.

“If we’re really going to bring the community together, why do we have separate squads?” asked Long.

High school principal David Dixon explained that only one cheerleading squad exists and that the other group was the newly formed dance team. He said that both squads are working together to unite during performances.

Joe Garner had questions regarding uniforms of the two entities insisting that the cheerleaders have been waiting on new uniforms for two years. He said the cheerleaders still haven’t gotten new uniforms but the dance team has.

Dixon said that the dance team uniforms were purchased through fundraising efforts and that the school had not provided any funding.

In unrelated complaints, both school board member Richard Saxer and Long voiced concerns about the purchase of math textbooks. Long asked what happened to the public review of textbooks in the past where parents and teachers were shown copies of textbooks in consideration.

“In our bills, we have $47,160 in textbooks and to the best of my knowledge we never had a presentation on any of these. Obviously, a lot of textbooks become curriculum for the classes. I really believe that we should have a presentation on any further textbook because we’re just approving them kind of blindly,” said Saxer.

Superintendent Rebecca Gates said that a new language arts textbook adoption would be coming up soon and a presentation would be included.

Gates also announced that schools have reached a reciprocal agreement with the YMCA where the basketball and dance teams will have access to YMCA facilities for practice in exchange for the use of the schools’ football field.

The board also voted to donate an old flag pole to Joey Gaskins for a war memorial at Coan Baptist Church as part of his Eagle Scout project. Chairman Betty Christopher made the motion which was seconded by Myrtle Phillips and approved unanimously, 5-0.