From 1976 to 2001, the Path to Success: Associate Superintendent Walt Sherlin
July 24, 2001 - When Wake County Schools Associate Superintendent Walt Sherlin sought a job in 1974, there were 3,000 applicants for 77 teacher vacancies in the Raleigh City schools. A month after school had started, Sherlin was hired to teach at Ligon Junior High. In his third year, Raleigh City schools and Wake County schools merged into one system.
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| In the early 1980's, Sherlin was the assistant principal at Ligon Middle School, one of the district's first magnet schools. |
"I can remember it being a fairly heated issue, or
an issue that was talked about a lot for three or four years
in terms of molding the two school systems into one. It was
a while before we felt like one," said Sherlin. "The
kids and families handled it really well. It was a huge change
for all employees in the new system."
As a young teacher, Sherlin remembers the pride he took in
the Raleigh City schools. In the first years of merger, the
two systems worked to become one, creating a new teaching
curriculum and new board policies. In the second year, a new
student assignment plan brought widespread change. Sherlin
moved from Ligon to Carroll Junior High.
"A lot of the white students who had been at Ligon,
who lived in North Hills out beyond Carroll, were transferred
to Carroll at the same time as part of the new plan. It just
happened that I went with them," said Sherlin. "Ligon
received some new families. I'm not sure where they were from.
After that, Ligon struggled to meet its capacity-to maintain
a racial balance and to be full."
Inner city schools were becoming under utilized. Suburban
schools were becoming more and more crowded. Inner city schools
had a high percentage of African American students enrolled.
Suburban schools had a high percentage of white students enrolled.
This trend continued through merger and the first student
assignment plan. In 1981, Dr. Walter Marks was named superintendent
and began championing the concept of magnet schools.
"The magnet program was another huge change," said
Sherlin. "Dr. Marks sold it. A lot of board members were
not certain that it would work at all. There was a big public
hearing at Martin about implementing the magnet program. The
board voted to do it and dern if we didn't do it, and dern
if it didn't work, and dern if isn't still working 20 years
later. Pretty quickly, it filled up the city schools voluntarily
and if it didn't racially balance them within the goals that
the board had set, it got them closer than it had been. It
relieved overcrowding in the former county schools. It was
done mostly by the teachers and the administrators in the
school system. Dr. Marks had a plan, but it couldn't have
been done without an unbelievable commitment from the principals
and the teachers."
In May 1982, Sherlin left Carroll to return to Ligon as assistant
principal. His first job was to close Crosby-Garfield school
as a sixth grade center and convert it to house the 400 sixth
graders attending the new Ligon Gifted and Talented Magnet
Middle. The school system changed from junior high schools
with seventh- through ninth-grade to middle schools with sixth-
through eighth-grade, and at the same time began creating
magnet schools.
"We were drawing students from all over the county,"
said Sherlin. "We had a self-contained Gifted and Talented
program. We had a varied and expansive elective program that
we didn't know much about in terms of the content of the electives
or how to schedule it. Nobody had ever done anything like
that before, so we were trying to make it up as we went. A
lot of teachers came on faith that it would work and it did."
Ligon students had a seven-instructional-period day with
four basic education classes and three electives ranging from
band to Tarheel Ghosts.
"We had great teachers," said Sherlin. "One
of the things that was real difficult was that there were
300-400 electives that teachers signed up to teach that there
wasn't a lot of curriculum for. There were all kinds of committees
that wrote curriculum for the electives. The curriculum writers
would do an outline of what a curriculum might be, and would
write lesson plans for the first two weeks of classes. We
would give the curriculum to the teacher and after two weeks,
the teacher was out of lesson plans and just had a general
outline of what they were supposed to teach and they had to
develop the curriculum. Teachers killed themselves and did
a wonderful, wonderful job of making the electives worthwhile.
Kids enjoyed them and parents were happy with the program.
Ligon pretty quickly became known as a successful school."
Transportation for the new magnet program was complex. At
the time, a school was thought to have a large fleet if it
had 15 buses. Seventy-two were assigned to bring students
from all over the county to Ligon and the new magnet high
school, Enloe. There were 35 buses at Ligon and 35 at Enloe,
and the schools had to carefully coordinate bus arrivals and
departures. Sherlin managed the Crosby-Garfield campus of
Ligon sixth graders two blocks away from the main Ligon campus.
He had his own fleet of buses to transport students back to
Ligon at the end of the day. In addition, Sherlin had to bus
the sixth graders between the two campuses every period. He
became a certified bus driver to fill in for absent drivers
on the routes between campuses.
"If I was in a meeting with parents, or a conference with a student, the bell would ring at the end of the period, I would have to excuse myself, go get on the bus, wait for it to load up, and drive it from Crosby to Ligon, and then bring it back filled with students. Unbelievable!" said Sherlin. "We did that for three years and we made it work pretty well."
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| Today, Sherlin serves as Wake County Schools Associate Superintendent for Operations. |
The administrators spent a lot of time on the road promoting
the new magnet schools and recruiting students to attend.
Through the elective program, the school developed talented
musicians and performers. They would perform shows across
the county and Sherlin and other administrators worked to
recruit new students.
"We had road shows," said Sherlin. "One year, we had 12 or 14 recruiting shows at night around the county. We would take kids and they would perform and we would talk about our program and recruit. We did Oliver. That first year we may have done a dozen performances of Oliver. It was great."
The schedule was demanding. One semester Sherlin clocked
it. He was working 80 hours a week. According to Sherlin,
the magnet program was successful in Wake County in those
first years because the county's top administrators and teachers
were recruited into the program, and they made it successful.
"The people went at first on faith. Over a year or two,
the program began to solidify. I don't think anyone knew a
whole heck a lot about what would happen that first year.
It was a whole lot of energy and a whole lot of effort, and
a whole lot of positive stuff happening. The program was really
good. There were great principals in the magnet program. There
were great teachers. That somewhat muted all the other noise
going along with it. There were terrific transportation issues,
but at the end of the bus ride, and Bill McNeal says this,
'If there are good things happening at the end of the bus
ride, the bus ride is worthwhile.' I think it proved that
there were good things happening at the end of the bus ride,
and it was teachers that did it."
The merger of the Raleigh City and Wake County schools created
a new school system. Many people in the community and in the
schools worked hard for a number of years to help the new
system enjoy success.
"When I look back on it, I'm just amazed, taken, appreciative, in awe, have so much respect for our forefathers who made the decision to merge the systems," said Sherlin. "I think about the community leaders that saw the bad things that were happening in the school systems and in the Raleigh community. I think about the strength, character and courage it took for them to merge the Raleigh system and the Wake County system at a time when it was unpopular. It was the courageous thing to do. Where we are now is in a large part an effort of the people of the last 25 years that would have been undoable without the heroism of the community leaders and the school system people who merged the two systems."