Riverside High Students on How to Spend MacKenzie Scott’s $18 Million

An Open Letter to the DPS School Board

Dear members of the Durham Board of Education,

On November 15 Durham Public Schools (DPS) received a grant for $18 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. DPS is one of many public school districts receiving donations, and while Scott is known for selecting the organizations she funds out of the public eye and with no specific explanation for each selection, it’s clear why she chose DPS.

Scott looks for organizations with missions that indicate “high potential for sustained positive impact” and “experienced leadership representative of the community served.”

Scott’s philosophy of choosing organizations that are already committed to equity and uplifting underserved communities should also be the lens through which DPS decides how to use the money.

“When our giving team focuses on any system in which people are struggling, we don’t assume that we, or any other single group, can know how to fix it,” Scott wrote in an essay published last March. “This means a focus on the needs of those whose voices have been underrepresented.”

This donation has the potential, and the intention, to significantly impact students, so we encourage you to listen to student voices. We know how our schools work and what our education looks like better than anyone. We know what needs to be changed.

With her philosophy in mind and our own perspectives as high school students, we recommend using the funds to address three critical needs.

Buses

On November 23, DPS announced that 24 buses would either be delayed or not in service at all due to driver shortages. Some students were hours late to class. Others simply couldn’t go to school because they couldn’t get another ride.

The shortcomings of our bus system is the most urgent and glaring issue impacting our students right now. Buses are often late picking students up at their stops and drop them off tardy to their morning classes. A driver shortage forces many buses to transport two separate loads, which leaves students, teachers, and administrators waiting at school for an hour or more after class is dismissed. It’s a tremendous waste of students’ time, an inhibitor to education, and a serious equity issue. Students who can drive themselves or have parents who pick them up leave as soon as the school day ends, while students who have to ride the bus wait every day.

The district has already increased pay multiple times to try to recruit more drivers. If staffing issues continue to prevent us from improving student transportation, we need to create programs and enrichment opportunities to better utilize the time students spend waiting for their bus after school. What if there was tutoring and homework help for students who spend their afternoons waiting for the bus? What if we were able to implement teachers’ ideas that could boost academic progress during the time kids currently spend standing in a parking lot?

Using this money to fix the issues with our bus system would have a direct and immediate impact on students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the whole school community.

Additional resources for impoverished students and families

There is a slew of research that suggests that poverty is the number one factor that impacts academic achievement. About 55 percent of DPS families qualify for free or reduced lunch. As inflation and reduced access to free school meals due to federal funding cuts create new financial challenges, the district should prioritize the needs of its low-income students.

This can take the form of broader access to free lunch for students or guaranteed meals for students and families during breaks. This could be after-school transportation for students who want to take part in clubs or sports after school but don’t have access to a ride. We could provide small-group, professional tutoring opportunities to reduce the achievement gap, or resource closets at school that discreetly offer toiletries, clothing items, and food to take home.

DPS showed its commitment to supporting low-income students during the pandemic by fast-tracking individual Chromebooks and making all meals free and available. With the $18 million, the district can and should expand the services it provides and offer additional resources that were previously unattainable.

Enriched academic opportunities/modernized classrooms

Coming back from online learning has been tough for many students. Data from NAEP Nation’s Report Card shows that decades of academic progress has been erased by pandemic learning loss, especially for younger students. Let’s not pretend we can fix this issue by “making up” that year and a half that we “lost.” Instead, let’s move forward with educational opportunities that will offer students a more robust learning experience that compensates for years of compromised stimulation and instruction.

Our journalism class knows how money and resources can enhance learning. Last year, The Pirates’ Hook partnered with The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting to pilot a high school program designed to recruit journalists of color. We took field trips to the News and Observer headquarters and UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. World-class reporters, editors, and college professors facilitated workshops via Zoom to supplement our curriculum. And local journalists visited our classes to coach us through the research and writing process as we completed our own investigative reporting projects. The additional adults drove down the student-to-teacher ratio, which enriched our learning. These experiences produced some of the best writing ever featured in the Hook.

However, like many other classrooms at Riverside, we face outdated technology and broken equipment. Our class set of Macs is almost 13 years old. They no longer run up-to-date versions of the Adobe software we use to edit photos and design our print editions. Using the grant money to modernize classrooms like ours could upgrade us to Adobe Creative Cloud software, which would allow us to save files to a cloud and work collaboratively, similar to Google Drive. It could fund additional cameras and microphones for broadcast and podcast projects.

We are evidence that enriched academic opportunities and modernized classrooms are both positive and scalable. Our class, like our school and district, is diverse. We publish the only bilingual high school newspaper in North Carolina and compete with schools from more affluent cities and districts for state and national awards. Last year, our newspaper was recognized as one of the best in the state. Think about the kind of content we could produce if we had updated technology on par with professional and college-level newsrooms. And think about how many other DPS classrooms could benefit, and grow, in the same way we did.

Our district has a total operating budget of $678 million, so we know that an $18 million grant won’t be able to fix everything. But by targeting the right issues, the school board has the opportunity to enact significant change and address issues that we’ve never had the capital for.

Like Scott, we don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we as students are the underrepresented voices she seeks to amplify. We do have a real understanding of the issues that affect our community.

Board members, please consider the suggestions outlined in this letter and by our classmates. We value DPS and all of the work it does, and we hope that this donation is able to have the highest impact on its student beneficiaries.

Sincerely,

The Pirates’ Hook staff

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The following are op-eds from students at Riverside High School

Fix Our Bus Transportation

By Isabelle Abadie

Since I was 11 years old I have taken the bus to and from school. In elementary school, buses showed up on time to take us to and from field trips. But for middle 

school, I woke up at 5:45 a.m. to get to the bus stop by 6:30 and be at school by 7:10. It was annoying to do every day, but it did get me to school on time and home before dark.

The first time I experienced the bus shortage myself was in fifth grade. It was the end of the year and all of the fifth graders were going camping to celebrate graduating from elementary school. Still, instead of taking hikes and eating s’mores, we were sitting in the front lobby of George Watts Elementary School. Our bus was over two hours late. Teachers were starting to get worried, and we were all starting to get bored.

With no sign or word that a bus was on its way or even coming at all, someone made a quick call to Lakewood Montessori Middle School, and 30 minutes later an activity bus was outside. Our gym teacher, Justin Lasher, drove us to our campsite.

Bus issues became glaringly apparent when I reached middle school. Though I lived just two miles from my school, Lakewood Middle School in the downtown area of Durham, I had to get up before dawn to get to my bus stop because my bus didn’t pick up just kids from Lakewood but also students who were going to Shepard Middle School, which is near NC Central University.

The morning bus rides were not bad except for waking up so early, but the afternoon rides were crazy. Four buses would come to Lakewood, pick up all of the bus riders and take us to Shepard, where we then all got off and got on a different bus with Shepard kids and, finally, went home.

Though this may have seemed like an equitable solution in theory, in reality, it was not. The buses were so packed that sometimes students would have to sit three to a seat. Most of the kids being shuttled from Lakewood to Shepard were traveling to the other side of Durham and, in the process, passing the neighborhoods they lived in. This “solution” meant we got home an hour to an hour and a half after school ended.

I became so frustrated with this situation that, halfway through my eighth-grade year, I opted to ride my bike to school, regardless of the weather. That got me to and from school in less than 20 minutes.

I strongly believe we should use the $18 million grant from MacKenzie Scott to fix our bus situation. As of December 1, DPS has 13 open positions in its transportation department. DPS drivers currently make $17 an hour and work 180 days a year, which roughly adds up to $24,000 a year; they also receive benefits for health, dental, and eye care as well as vacation time and sick days. But even though the district increased bus drivers’ pay last year, the issues remain. Many drivers still have to find a second source of income, which wouldn’t happen if they were paid a livable wage and were paid during school breaks. Bus drivers should get paid on school breaks, just like teachers, because then they might not have to find another job for the times that students are out of school.

Right now, we are seeing the effects of bus drivers not getting enough holiday time off. During the weekend of December 17, DPS administrators sent out emails to parents of bus riders explaining that many drivers had already gone on holiday break and that there would be a big bus shortage on December 19 and 20. Although school administrators were apologetic, they did not offer a solution and instead sought volunteers with a bus driver’s license to step up and help.

After addressing driver shortages and wages, the remaining grant money should go to buying more buses so fewer students experience overcrowded buses. One bus costs $100,000, according to a WRAL News article, which means that, with the grant, DPS would have enough money to buy the 10 more buses needed so that drivers don’t have to pick up as many kids, making pickup times later, and have extra buses in case buses break down or aren’t working.

As of December 16, DPS announced that it would issue incentives to bus drivers to encourage better attendance and more employment. Bus drivers will get an extra $150 for a month of perfect attendance; all new drivers hired from now on will get a $1,000 bonus, and any driver hired that already has a bus driver’s license will receive a $3,000 bonus.

Even though the district has already taken steps to solve this problem, I still believe we should spend the $18 million and do whatever it takes to fix our bus system because it will help every DPS school. The students affected by this most are kids who don’t have any alternative transportation. Students need bus transportation to get to school, and right now, they are missing hours, sometimes days, that should be spent learning. 

Abadie is a freshman at Riverside High School.

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Improve Infrastructure

By Lana McIlvaine

When Riverside students heard that MacKenzie Scott donated $18 million to Durham Public Schools, they came up with a million ways to use the money to enhance our education.

As kids in every classroom discussed the possibilities, one idea came up more than the others: infrastructure.

Let’s face it, the DPS schools are outdated and falling apart.

One of my first conversations about Riverside ended with the remark “Oh, the school that looks like a prison?” Known for its bland and broken exterior, dilapidated bathrooms, and messed up heating and a/c systems, Riverside could use some work.

For example, rebuilding bathroom stalls, updating ventilation, fixing heating and cooling systems, and renovating for appearance could all help increase achievement by improving the learning environment. Right now, it feels like people just don’t care about the education system and our schools. Problems are constantly ignored, and opportunities available to students seem too few. The long-term solution would be for the state government to step up and care about its youth. There are plans to fund the schools of North Carolina, but it’s not clear if lawmakers will act on them. Fixing infrastructure would only be a start to bettering our schools as a whole.

Northern High and Durham School of the Arts are getting completely new schools on new campuses. The bond that Durham residents voted for in November will fund that construction. For most other schools, too, new construction would be much needed and exciting. There are 55 DPS schools, with varying numbers of students each, and around 32,000 students across the entire district. Whether divided equally or based on the student population, $18 million would disappear fast. Investing in buildings themselves, in the bones of schools, would benefit everyone inside them.

If the building is the bones of a school, how can students be expected to perform adequately and how can programs thrive without a good building? Investing in school infrastructure would set the standard for learning expectations.

For students and staff, much of our lives take place within a school. It is where we work, learn, eat, and socialize. Walking into a comfortable school every morning would both inspire students to do their best and help them focus on schoolwork. For example, some classrooms’ temperatures are so hot or cold as to be distracting or uncomfortable to students trying to learn. Good infrastructure improves quality of life and community connection and demonstrates progress.

Many things make up a great school. When I think about concepts and ideals like safety and security, academic excellence, dominant athletics, and opportunities for creativity and enrichment, I imagine a utopian school with happy people. In my mind, I see a nice building, not bathrooms with shattered mirrors and broken toilets, classrooms that are too hot or too cold, and dirty white floors.

Investing in an aesthetically pleasing and functioning building will give room for better things to come to the school. Maybe people would actually care about the education of our youth if the district looked the part. 

McIlvaine is a sophomore at Riverside High School

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Increase Access to Mental Health Resources

By Piper Winton

Imagine walking down the hallway toward the front office, holding in tears, just needing someone to talk to so you can make it through your last two classes.

When you walk through the door, you are greeted at the front desk.

“Good afternoon,” a front office secretary says to you. “What’s wrong?” 

You can feel the tears building up.

“I need to speak to a counselor, please.”

A few tears slip out.

“You’re going to need to log into the student service page and request a time,” says the secretary. “It looks like the next available slot is in about three weeks.”

The tears start falling, fast.

“OK,” you whisper.

You leave with your head down and vision blurred.

The embarrassment of heading back to class with your eyes watering and face flushed is almost unbearable. When you walk toward your seat you can feel 22 sets of eyes staring at you, some filled with judgment, others pity, but all begging to know what happened.

For too many students, this hypothetical scenario is their reality.

This is a real barrier to academic success. Instead of going to class able to focus, students oftentimes show up distracted and disengaged. And while this doesn’t qualify as a “crisis,” it still needs immediate attention.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in three high school students throughout the United States experience symptoms of depression, while one in six youth have made a suicide plan. These statistics have both increased by at least 40 percent since 2009 and are expected to keep rising.

Additionally, according to the American School Counselor Association, the ideal caseload for a counselor is around 250 students. At Riverside, a counselor’s average caseload is around 350. The state average in North Carolina is 386.

Currently, DPS as a whole has access to three different mental health programs: co-located services, Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS), and Inner Explorer. But the availability of these programs varies greatly depending on the school.

Most schools have at least one of these services available, but access can be very limited. In order for students to actually use these services, schools need to have trained staff members on campus, and most schools don’t, due to the cost and time it takes to complete these training sessions.

The $18 million grant DPS recently received from MacKenzie Scott could train a lot of faculty and staff members and could pay for a lot of additional programs, too.

Instead of walking back to class trying to hide your tears, imagine returning refreshed and relieved. When you enter the front office, someone greets you and asks what’s wrong. You feel the tears building up, and a few slip out, but instead of being told to schedule an appointment, you walk to your counselor’s office right away.

You sink into the chair, feeling no embarrassment about the tears sliding down your face or what you’re about to say. Your counselor was available. You have a great conversation and use the tools and strategies they learned from their professional training.

You can finally start to breathe again, and your heart is no longer beating out of your chest because you know you’ll be able to make it through your last two classes without feeling the stares piercing through your skin at each and every movement.

This could easily become a reality. DPS could greatly improve mental health support and accessibility with its new grant money, which would not only better the lives of 32,000 students but would also immensely enhance the district’s overall academic success. 

Winton is a junior at Riverside High School.

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Provide More College and Career Exploration

By Donna Diaz

My freshman year, the only thing I knew I was good at was talking.

I would ride in the car, asking my aunt millions of questions all at once, and she always seemed to know the answer, so it was easy for me to ask anything. But did I know I could do this as a future job? Of course not, until I got into journalism.

Most of the time students don’t have an idea of what they should do after high school. Some don’t even have a plan for what to do during high school.

In my case, journalism has been the most influential class I ever took. It opened many doors for me. I’m meeting new people in the community, and learning and working with classmates and adults in ways I would have never thought possible. I’m making friendships with people who can relate to having a similar passion as me. And I would have never known I had these interests until I got into the class.

I’ve participated in workshops. I wrote a few pieces, published an investigative story about why so many bilingual students take Spanish 1, and interviewed my school’s French teacher, who also happens to speak Arabic and Berber. Last spring, I learned how to create a résumé, applied for an internship, and spent the summer working with WUNC to create my own radio segment.

Young people need an opening, even if it’s small, because many don’t know where to start. Schools should be able to provide these types of openings for other classes as well. And with the $18 million grant from MacKenzie Scott, DPS could give these kinds of opportunities to all students.

When kids enter high school, many only think about passing their classes, moving on to the next grade, and surviving that final exam. Others don’t care about their classes or their GPA. They don’t think high school is important.

But let’s say schools gave them classes where they can actually engage, and it’s less about a structured grading rubric and more about helping them build life experiences, skills, and connections.

It’s important for young people to explore and experience what they could do as a career in the future. And high school is the time to do it. At the very least, it will give kids activities to put on their college applications. And at most, more students like me, who feel lost and unsure about their futures, will realize the value of school and discover what they could do in their lives, like making a difference in their communities, making their families proud, and bettering themselves as a whole. This could be done with one push, one opening, to change and better a student’s life. DPS should use the grant money to give high school students the chance to explore interests that could become occupations rather than forcing them to concentrate only on academics. 

Diaz is a junior at Riverside

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Increase Arts Funding

By Sadie Irby

Last year, if students in my art class finished their project early, our art teacher told them to grab used canvases covered with unwanted art and paint them over white. 

Acrylic paints are commonly created to be unremovable and last a long time, so just resurfacing one canvas would take many layers to complete. The surface of a canvas affects the art drastically, and we did not have access to sanders or paint-removing alcohols, so the canvas was never “good as new.” But it stretched our supplies, and allowed a lot of students to keep painting on canvas the following year. Canvases were left used when the school year ended because students did not want to bring their artwork home.

Though this may seem a smart way to save money, it really showcases how desperate the visual arts in Durham schools are for better funding.

Most of the arts funding is paid through a combination of district and school funds. The art and Career Technical Education (CTE) program are the only programs with set budgets, and for visual arts, each teacher receives $2,500 combined in funds from both DPS and Riverside. Teachers use their budgets to pay for supplies, but materials can take weeks to ship and our teachers often pay for materials with their own money in order to get them sooner.

Using Durham Public Schools’ $18 million grant from MacKenzie Scott to increase funding for the arts would give high schoolers more opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills. The arts can help students with their social and emotional needs not only as a creative outlet but also as a resource to help students mentally. Art engagement has proven to lower the chances of developing mental illnesses and build students’ confidence and self-worth, even if they don’t plan to pursue art beyond high school.

Additional funding would also address issues of equity. Art supplies are very expensive, so underprivileged students are unable to buy their own and, as a result, can’t thrive in advanced art classes that expect kids to buy their own tools. Most of the time teachers will allow students to borrow materials, but they are shared by all of the art classes and often worn. Many of the materials are damaged and borderline unusable.

Art is a pricey hobby to pursue, and classism is present within the DPS and broader community. No matter how talented you are as an artist, if you can’t afford the resources, your art will never look as good or reach its full potential and you are not receiving an equal opportunity.

Increased funding would also foster more inclusion and creativity. Once students complete beginning and intermediate art classes at Riverside, they need an art teacher’s recommendation to move up. Even if they pass with As and Bs, if their art doesn’t reach certain standards and expectations, opportunities to continue are limited.

This might seem cruel and strict on the surface, but teachers aren’t given much of a choice. There are only two visual arts teachers at Riverside and they teach five different levels of art classes. The program is small, and schools don’t have the resources or staff to continue to teach more than a select few. With funding, advanced classes and the process of getting into advanced classes would be less divisive for both students and teachers.

Supplies affect art tremendously and funding would benefit art education as a whole. Quality art supplies can be pricey, and underprivileged students need this funding in order to reach their full artistic potential. 

Irby is a sophomore at Riverside.

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Install Turf Athletic Fields

By Jaden Butler

Durham Public Schools, as we all know by now, received a generous, $18 million grant from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. The gift is primarily intended to promote equal opportunities and achievement for American communities.

A portion of the grant should be allocated to athletic programs, and all DPS high schools should get turf fields.

The weather during the fall of 2020 rendered Riverside’s main athletic field unplayable. It was so bad that all of our home games were moved to Durham County Stadium. We practiced on a field full of mud, holes, ants, and puddles of water.

Last year, Riverside’s homecoming weekend began on a rainy Friday afternoon. The football team was supposed to play Northern that night, but conditions outside were nearly unplayable. No one knew if the game was actually going to happen.

Riverside athletic director Robert Duncan calls a turf field “a hope and a dream.” It’s Duncan’s job to take care of the school’s fields, and he decides when to cancel practices and games due to the weather.

Duncan and assistant athletic director Brian Strickland work tirelessly to make our grass fields playable. Riverside’s athletic staff spends three to four hours per week cutting grass, much of it on their own time. The school recently invested $10,000 in a digital machine that will paint the field on its own.

A single match on a poorly maintained field can ruin athletes’ play, increase the risk of injury, and decimate the field for the rest of the season. Artificial turf fields, on the other hand, are far more durable than natural grass fields and can be used all year, regardless of weather conditions. There’s no need to paint, because the lines are permanent, too.

Turf would also improve playability, cost less to maintain, and reduce injuries. And it would benefit many different athletic programs, as Riverside’s main field is home to the majority of the school’s athletic teams, including football, men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse, field hockey, and track and field.

While DPS schools sometimes play at Durham County Stadium, which has turf, none of the district’s schools have turf on campus. But many local schools do, including Durham Academy, Voyager, Green Hope, and Cedar Ridge.

Turf fields would encourage more families to enroll at DPS schools as well, as student-athletes prefer to play on nice fields, not mud. It could also generate revenue for the school, which could rent the facility to local recreational leagues and host youth sports and community events.

I believe there has never been a better time to upgrade the district’s athletic facilities. Riverside has demonstrated that with a decent grass field, we can compete with anyone. Consider what we could do with turf!

Butler is a junior at Riverside.