DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997                TAG: 9704130071

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: By MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY                    LENGTH:   91 lines

RESPECT 101 PRIVATE SCHOOL TEACHES AND OFFERS IT

It's been 32 years since President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the Great Society.

That also was the year of the Watts riots; Marines landed in Vietnam, and Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

1965 also was the year that the private, all-white Albemarle Academy on U.S. 17 South was established to avoid public school integration.

Many of the schools born in the tensions of President Johnson's civil rights programs are long gone, but those that survived have done so by tempering the racial challenge of their existence and providing academic excellence without the old anger.

There are 545 private schools now licensed in North Carolina, according to David Mills, a spokesman for the Governor's Office of Non-Public Schools in Raleigh.

And most of them are growing as a result of increasing parental concern over some public school systems.

Not long ago, a black mother brought her son into the headmaster's office to see about enrolling him.

``She said she wanted to find a school that was safer and without the stresses of some public schools,'' headmaster J.E.B. Stuart said, adding that there are several black students at the school.

Enrollment at the school - now called the Albemarle School - is growing so fast that the present buildings on U.S. 17 South soon will be inadequate.

``In 1995 we had 141 students enrolled in K-12 classes - kindergarten through 12th grade,'' Stuart said last week.

``In 1996 we had 165 students; this year we have 198 enrolled for the 1997-1998 school season.

``And those figures don't include our rapidly growing preschool classes.''

John Edwin Blades Stuart, 50, seems likely to remain a prep school headmaster for as long as he wants the Albemarle School job. The symbolism of a modern-day J.E.B. Stuart is not lost on parents familiar with the Confederate calvary general of the same name. The two are not related.

It took a lot of net-casting by Albemarle School board members to get their own J.E.B. Stuart last year. The present-day Stuart has been coming up fast since he graduated from Oak Ridge Military Academy and East Carolina University. He started teaching in the Camden County school system in 1970.

He was principal of Camden County High School and principal of Camden Middle School in the years before the Albemarle School board members decided that this modern-day Stuart was the right man for a private school job that called for grace as well as strength.

Albemarle School discipline comes in large and small packages but it is pervasive, and no day passes without some constraint in the interests of good manners or proper behavior directed at a student.

Judi Stanley Stuart, 48, J.E.B. Stuart's wife, is part of the package that came with the new headmaster.

Between them, the couple displays more synergy than most educators. Judi is the Albemarle School curriculum coordinator who steers the subjects being taught in contemporary style and with modern textbooks.

Everywhere Judi goes at the school, she provides students with a portable course in Politeness 101, and woe to the student who, even once, ignores her.

``Around here we pay a lot of attention to `Yes, Ma'am'; `No, Ma'am'; and `Please, Sir,' '' Judi Stuart said.

J.E.B. Stuart has the good fortune of knowing how to instill discipline and knowing how to play and talk like a kid when the occasion demands. He comes from a Coast Guard family where discipline was a part of life.

Stuart chuckled over one of his first encounters with a fractious student.

``I stopped one of our students in a hallway and told him to stop doing whatever it was that caught my eye,'' Stuart said.

`` `My Mama doesn't make me stop . . . ' '' the boy said.

``Well, I'm not your Mama and around here you'll stop when I tell you to,'' Stuart said.

Albemarle School students live under a Student Bill of Rights that begins with ``Students shall receive respect from fellow students, teachers, parents and administrators of Albemarle School . . .''

There are nine more ``Rights'' designed to guarantee the individuality of students.

The Bill of Rights seems to work: there is a lot of laughter outside of classes and obvious concentration in front of blackboards.

Private schools are outside the financial blanket of public schools and Stuart is trying to develop more sources of money to expand the Albemarle School.

Tuition for grades 9 to 12 averages $3,000 a year.

To reduce class sizes and to buy more educational equipment, the school probably will have to raise tuition, but Stuart is confident the school will survive.

``A student grade of `A' in our school means a 93 to 100 grade for a whole semester,'' said Stuart.

``Our students work hard to get A's and that's the way it should be.'' ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON color photos

Albemarle School students kick up their heels while chasing a ball

during a physical education class Thursday.

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