NCCAT’s Ocracoke campus looking at cuts in staff, seminars

July 15, 2011 | Local News | By: Catherine Kozak

BY CATHERINE KOZAK

Decreases in staff at the Ocracoke campus of the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching are unavoidable, but the full pain of a 50 percent budget cut by the North Carolina General Assembly has yet to be felt.

After the elimination of at least 40 positions at NCCAT’s sister campus in Cullowhee, executive director Elaine Franklin said she is holding off on cuts at the coastal campus.

“The Board of Trustees has asked me to wait until they can explore a number of different avenues,” Franklin said in an interview on Wednesday.

Franklin said that she believes that the board wants more time to consider the impacts on the smaller facility. She said she hopes to have an answer in a few days.

In addition to slashing 30 full-time positions at the mountain campus, there were also 11 hourly contract positions eliminated, and three full-time staff were demoted to three-quarter time.

The state opened the teacher training center in Ocracoke in 2007, after a $6.9 million renovation of the abandoned Coast Guard station overlooking Silver Lake harbor.

Thirteen of the 82 staff positions NCCAT had before the cuts are located on Ocracoke, where the campus is credited with bolstering the island’s economy.

In the state budget recently approved by the General Assembly, NCCAT was appropriated about $3 million. The center’s state appropriation in fiscal year 2010 was $6,020,878. Its budget had already been slashed nearly $2 million in 2008.

As a result, Franklin said, only 25 percent of the popular but costly professional development seminars that had been scheduled in the fall will be held.

Most of the seminar staffing on the coast, she said, has been provided by Cullowhee.

Some of the six seminars cancelled this fall at Ocracoke — nine had been scheduled — include “The Landscape of Democracy: Our National Parks,” “Oral History: Capturing North Carolina’s Diverse Heritage,” “Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature,” and “The Ecology of the Barrier Islands.”

Six seminars and a beginning teachers program scheduled this summer in Ocracoke were not affected by budget cuts.

Encouraged by then-Gov. Jim Hunt, NCCAT was established by the General Assembly in 1985, with a mission of retaining high quality teachers in the classroom by keeping them engaged and challenged by enriching their professional lives.

According to its website, in 2009-2010 NCCAT directly served about 2,850 teachers statewide in interdisciplinary seminars and programs. Over five years, those teachers are expected to impact more than 1 million students. Participants in NCCAT professional development from 2004-2007, the website said, were reported to have a 96.9 percent average annual retention rate, compared with 87.9 percent statewide and 83.2 percent nationally.

“The most important thing is that NCCAT keeps teachers in the profession,” former executive director Mary McDuffie said in a 2006 interview. “It costs the state of North Carolina $11,821 per teacher every time they have to replace a teacher.”

But critics contend that times have changed, and the state can no longer afford the luxury of an enrichment center that the conservative Carolina Journal called “teacher paradise.”

All costs for the seminars — food, books, lodging —are paid by the state for qualified teachers, principals, or school librarians whose applications are accepted. In 2006, costs per participant in a week-long seminar averaged $1,800.

But Franklin emphasized that the center also conducts year-round programming at the campuses and on-site at school districts for beginning and experienced teachers, including for charter schools.

“We need to stop thinking about seminars being synonymous with programming,” she said.

Franklin said that NCCAT is working on strategies to expand teaching programming, including the possibility of contracting with school districts and the state Department of Education. School boards may also be interested in coming to Cullowhee or Ocracoke for their retreats, which would keep the cost in the family, so to speak, and benefit NCCAT.

NCCAT is also looking at expanding access to the campuses, both of which are acclaimed for their beauty and desirable locales. Although their use is restricted to education-related activities, Franklin said, it may be possible to make them available for a fee to other state entities for events and conferences.

“We don’t want to see it vacant at all,” she said.

The Coast Guard left its Ocracoke station in 1996, and the 24-bedroom renovated facility on 1.55 acres situated between Silver Lake and Pamlico Sound has maintained the authentic appearance of the 1940 station.

After the center opened, a $1.5 million wetlands restoration was done to prevent further erosion on the sound-facing beach.

Even though by necessity its focus has shifted, Franklin said that NCCAT still intends to fulfill its mission, helped with more grant money and private contributions and other revenue streams.

And considering the “divisive” budget negotiations, she said, things could have been a lot worse. Going from the governor’s proposed 10 percent cut, the state House eliminated NCCAT altogether. Then the Senate put back $500,000 until the property could be disposed of. At some point in the process, Cullowhee was to revert to Western University and Ocracoke to the federal government.

“I feel like we were on a roller coaster,” Franklin said.

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