At the end of Thursday night’s Dallas County Board of Education meeting, Board President Leroy Miles allowed two concerned parents of Dallas County High School to speak before the board, sparking a lengthy discussion about the many issues that the parents and students at Dallas County High School are concerned about.

The first of the two parents, Jean Primm, who currently has two children in the Dallas County School System, wanted to know if more teachers were being hired at Dallas County High School.

“The main point for me is teachers,” said Primm. “My kid sat in classes last year and did crossword puzzles and word searches and played on her phone for three classes. Are we actively seeking out teachers?”

Miles assured Primm that several teachers had been hired at Dallas County High School and that more were being sought out.
“I’m sure that [Superintendent] Mrs. Shelton is working on it. I know there has been a shortage,” said Miles.

Later in the meeting, Miles said that the State Department of Education has put measures in place to attract teachers to the school system to teach the core subjects including English, math, science and history.

Miles then commended Shelton on her effort to fill the teacher positions.

“There are some issues, trying to attract educators to come to this area,” said Miles. “There’s an issue. Not many people really want to come to Selma. They’re commuting from Montgomery to here and sometimes you tend to get the people you may not want.”

Board member Mark Story weighed in on there being a lack of teachers.

“We need better recruitment of teachers,” he said. “It’s hard to recruit the talent we really need and want here, it snowballs and gets worse and worse and worse.”

In addition to the lack of teachers, Primm also expressed her concern about other issues.

“There’s other situations going on up there,” said Primm. “Money can’t be explained. We don’t know where the money is. There’s PTO funds that we don’t know where they went. There’s softball funds that have discrepancies in them and we don’t know where that is. There have been reports of kids paying their senior fees and we don’t know what happened to that money.”

Primm also said that the Dallas County High School Principal was never there to make decisions, causing many things to be put off.

“When she wasn’t there to make the decisions, the decisions were not made and they missed important deadlines,” Primm said. “As of right now, the seniors don’t have a date set to take their senior pictures because a decision was never finalized.”

Primm’s final comment was about how the school handles disciplinary issues.

“The discipline situation is very unfairly handled,” said Primm. “If two kids get in trouble, the whole school is shut down.”

The second parent to speak at the meeting was Heather Wright, who has one child at Dallas County High School and one child at Martin Middle School.

Wright stated to the board that despite fundraisers conducted throughout the year, a PTO financial report showed a balance of only $24.77.

“That’s not okay,” said Wright. “I’m not going to sit down and be quiet about this, because I know that this is not the only account at the school that has had some issues this year. I want to know where the money is, that’s the bottom line. If we as a system cannot control our finances, then how can we pay teachers? How can we have things for the kids?”

Wright had other concerns aside from finances at Dallas County High School.

“Dallas County High School is not okay,” said Wright.

Wright described drugs, fights and an overall lack of safety at the school described to her by her daughter.

“It’s not like that at my workplace and I know it’s not like that at your workplace so what are we teaching our children?” asked Wright. “If you’re going to brush this under the rug then this system is going to be a failing system.”

“This is not going to be swept under the rug, we’re going to investigate,” said board member Mamie Solomon.

“We hear you,” said board member Roy Edwards. “I have asked the board to increase our disciplinary standards. I know that sometimes you have to take extreme measures to send a message to parents and students… I think all students are entitled to a quality education but I believe that bad students sometimes prevent the other students from receiving that quality education… It’s time for this board to act.”

Story and Miles both expressed their appreciation for both parents’ involvement and encouraged them to continue to bring to light issues within the school system that they feel need to be addressed.

“We appreciate your involvement and your level of involvement,” said Story. “We’ve got to have leadership from the very top all the way down, that includes us [the board]…keep pushing and have other parents reach out.”

Miles encouraged parents to go to Shelton with any issues that they may have.

“Kick her door down enough and she’ll bring it to us,” said Miles.