THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 26, 1996 TAG: 9604260515
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS
CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
A growing band of community activists is fed up with drug dealers in Sawyertown.
They're sending notices to absentee landlords warning them to get rid of tenants who peddle illicit substances and to fix up their properties or face court action.
Last month, 50 people marched through the streets of this northwest quadrant of the city led by members of the Inner-City Forum, a non-profit group dedicated to putting Elizabeth City neighborhoods derailed by drugs back on track.
On Saturday, the forum teams up with the Pasquotank County Partnership for Children, a non-profit public-private coalition, to host a community picnic at Hobbs Park. Food is free, thanks to area businesses, and any money raised will go to help Sawyertown youth.
By joining with the forum, the partnership, also known as Smart Start, is sealing one more alliance in a union that already includes educators, government agencies, businesses, churches, families and other non-profit groups in a collaborative effort to help children.
It's Pasquotank's second year in Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.'s $52 million, 3-year-old pilot project that now involves 32 of the state's 100 counties.
Agencies and groups must overcome obstacles in learning to work cooperatively, said Donna James-Whidbee, executive director for the Pasquotank County Partnership for Children.
``It takes a lot of breaking down barriers,'' she said.
Networking for a common goal comes naturally to folks in this mostly-rural county of 33,000 - in fact, to the whole 10-county northeastern portion of the state, where services have long been regionalized. There's a four-county health department with satellite offices, for example, at a 25-year-old regional jail.
Just last month, the Pasquotank County Partnership for Children opened its first family resource office at the Edgewood Center so that families can do ``one-stop shopping'' for services they need, which include everything from child care referral and subsidy to help getting to and from work - from immunizations to parenting education.
The biggest chunk of the $1.1 million state grant that launched the Pasquotank project last year went for child-care subsidies. Another big portion of the money went to help upgrade day-care centers.
One young mother, for example, was able to keep her job when a partnership van started driving her preschooler to and from Cora's Education Center.
``She was paying a taxi, was going to lose her job,'' said the center's director, Cora Wilson.
Wilson has upgraded her facility from an ``A'' rating - the minimum state licensing grade - to ``AA,'' said Mary Douglass, administrator for the partnership's child care resource and referral program.
``There's more space, better child-staff ratio,'' said Cynthia Spence, assistant director at Cora's Education Center.
And Wilson is just one of dozens of county day-care providers who've benefited from the partnership.
``It's this stage of the game that affects the dropout rate,'' said James-Whidbee. ``They have to learn to feel good about themselves to be successful'' later.
``Eighty percent of a child's intellect is developed by age five,'' saidRandy Keaton, the partnership's board chairman and county manager. ``We plan a list for parents at birth - what their kids need to know so they're ready to learn.''
Making sure that all of the county's approximately 3,000 children under age 6 enter kindergarten ready to learn is no easy task considering that 20 percent of families live in poverty and 31 percent of preschoolers are part of single-parent households. But helping families help their kids get ready for school increases the likelihood that they won't later fall behind, won't fall victim to the drug peddlers, won't drop out of school - won't end up in one of North Carolina's prisons
The cost of keeping about 23,700 men and women incarcerated in 92 prisons around the state is $30,000 each per year - more than most North Carolinians earn.
A program at Pasquotank Elementary School seeks to intervene in the lives of youths at risk for dropping out of school. It's called Togetherness of People. Most of the 26 boys in the project are in the fifth and sixth grades.
Key to the effort are a dedicated group of men from the community who work at Pasquotank's correctional facilities. The seven volunteer their time to take the youths on field trips and act as role models.
The youth intervention program is run by school guidance counselor Valerie Clark. She says that all of the kids involved in this first year of the project have brought their grade point averages up, some by ``as much as 30 points.''
After nearly four decades as Pasquotank Elementary School principal, Cecil Perry has developed a keen eye for picking out the at-risk children in each new crop of kindergartners. They are already lagging behind their peers, he says. He hopes that the county's Partnership for Children outreach efforts will result in fewer unprepared kids coming through the doors of his school.
Perry was watching on a recent weekday morning when Kevin Vines of the Hampton Roads Sharks, a minor league football team, gave the kids a pep talk.
``How many want to play professional football or basketball?'' asked Vines.
The hands shot up.
``What you've got to do first is get a good education,'' he tells the enthralled group. ``Don't make the mistake'' of dropping out of school. ``Of course there'll be obstacles, but no one can tell you what you can and can't do - with an education.''
The meeting between the athlete and his admirers was facilitated by Bob Bobulinski, Partnership for Children's new resource center director. He is also director of Virginia Beach's Making A Difference Foundation, a non-profit group that tutors kids after school.
``It's the community coming together,'' for the sake of its youth, said Bobulinski of the partnership's coalition and its new ally, the Inner-City Forum.
The Pasquotank County Partnership for Children ``has brought together a collective vision,'' says Paul Bryant, president of the Inner-City Forum's 10-member board of directors.
The 50-member forum has a good track record in giving a leg up to Elizabeth City neighborhoods.
Three years ago, the Hugh Cale section of town was a mirror image of Sawyertown today, said Bryant, who also participated in last October's Million Man March in Washington, D.C.
In Hugh Cale, forum members stepped in and motivated residents to act. Marches and pressure on landlords resulted in suspected drug dealers' flight and the closure of night clubs and pool halls. The net was a big drop in drug trafficking as well as incidences of violence, Bryant said.
Hugh Cale was the first of three problem areas the forum has defined. Now the focus is on Sawyertown.
The peaceful show of force in Sawyertown - the marching, the letters to landlords - has already had its effect, for some suspected drug dealers have packed up and left, according to Bryant.
``The dealers know,'' he said. MEMO: Saturday's community picnic is free for county residents. Games and
entertainment will include tug-of-war and dance contests, a cake walk
and a sack race. Voter registration will also take place. The picnic
at Hobbs Park begins at 1 p.m. and continues until 6 p.m. Also on
Saturday, Partnership for Children is offering free childhood
immunizations at the Halstead Boulevard fire station and Harney Park
Community Building from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON/
The Virginian-Pilot
Above, Cora's Education Center cares for youngsters while it helps
to enable parents to work. Below, Valerie Clark runs the TOPS
program at Sawyer Elementary School. Dashaun Dorsey, seated, is
captain of a team that includes, from left, Darryl Bowe, Antoine
Harris, Brandon Overton, Antron Green, Gordon Dove, Steve White and
Clarence Green.
by CNB