School system will aid tuition

Craven County Schools officials plan to cover the cost for its selected high school students to attend the Governor’s School of North Carolina program this summer after state lawmakers added a tuition charge for the first time in the program’s 47-year history.

State officials added the $500 tuition fee per student in the budget bill approved in August that will help cover the cuts made by state leaders to the six-week summer residential program as they tried to close a $4.6 billion budget gap.

Tom Winton, coordinator for Governor’s School of North Carolina, said the bill called for $475,000 in cuts to the program’s annual $1.33 million annual budget to operate the program.

The tuition covers a portion of that funding cut, he said, but without it, the cut would have meant “we wouldn’t be able to operate Governor’s School as we know it.”

“We operate a very lean program,” Winton said.

Winton said program officials are still addressing the remainder of the cut, and are trying to minimize the impact on students. The tuition charge may have impacted the number of student applications for summer 2010, as they appeared to be down slightly from last year’s total of about 1,800.

Allison Morris, director of middle and high schools, said Craven County Schools submitted 13 applications for students to attend the program in academics, and eight in the arts.

There are 400 students selected from the state to attend on the campus of Salem College in Winston-Salem, and another 400 go to the Meredith College campus in Raleigh.

Those students will have to be screened again at the state level to be selected for the program for intellectually gifted students that aims to introduce them to new ideas in 10 different disciplines, according to the Web site ncgovschoolorg.

Winton said it was left to the nominating schools to pay the tuition cost, but they were left open in how they could raise the money for it. They could pay the tuition with local dollars he said, or by charging families.

Craven County Schools Superintendent Larry Moser said the district plans to cover the cost of tuition for students selected to attend Governor’s School.

“Our students are giving up their summers – a big part of their summers,” he said in the November work session of the Craven County Board of Education. “I think we should pay for it.”

David Clifton, assistant superintendent for business and finance, said the district intends to cover the cost. When the school officials are notified of the number of students selected from the district – which is in March – he said the system will identify a funding source to cover it.

“I think the cost could have affected some of the students’ ability to attend,” Morris said.

Winton said this is the first time tuition has been charged for North Carolina’s program, which is the first Governor’s School program in the country, started in 1963 by Gov. Terry Sanford.

It was started at a time when there was a reinvestment in education, he said, and an effort “to go beyond what they traditionally experience to encourage even greater achievement, knowledge, innovation.”

New Bern resident Kate Flanagan, who attends the Saint Mary’s School in Raleigh, went to Governor’s School this past summer in English.

Flanagan said she studied poetry with North Carolina poet Chuck Sullivan, and since then she’s written poetry for fun in free verse since her class focused on modern and contemporary subject matter.

“It was really focused on expressing something unique, which was a lot of the motivation for what we did at Governor’s School,” she said.

Flanagan said the program was “amazing,” allowing her to learn about philosophy, to do a community service project, and to watch innovative presentations in drama, music and other areas by her fellow students.

She also enjoyed gathering on the grassy quad in the evenings to talk with her peers.

“It was a really great experience for me because you get to be around 399 other people who are very different, but have similar interests and are very bright,” she said.

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.