Around 9:30 a.m., Saturday, a group representing the Concerned Citizens of Calhoun County, began a peaceful march from the Richland Street location of the Calhoun County School District Office. Assembled by spokesperson, the Rev. Michael Charley, pastor of Word of Faith Christian Center in St. Matthews, the crowd of approximately 200 Calhoun County residents joined together to publically make a stand against the school board’s decisions to close Guinyard Elementary and John Ford Middle Schools and to spend more than $31 million to build a new facility and improve other schools.

Charley said that the congregation behind the banner with the phrase, “Concerned Citizens of Calhoun County - Taking a Stand,” were marching to bring awareness and to affirm opposition to the school board plan and other unfair practices in Calhoun County.

“The Concerned Citizens want to let the school board know that we will continue to voice our opinions and our plan is to make our voice really loud as we stop spending money in Calhoun County. Those politicians that need the vote from the Concerned Citizens are not going to get it in the next election. We are going to let our voices be heard,” said Charley.

In September of 2006, at a meeting of the Calhoun County School Board, the decision was made to close two schools and build a new facility by a 3-2 vote along racial lines with Chairman Michael Drake, Gary Porth and Sandra Tucker in favor and Vice Chairman Eliza Claxton and Secretary Debra Fredrick opposed. At that meeting, Superintendent Ken Westbury told the audience of more than 100 people, that both Guinyard Elementary and John Ford Middle schools lacked proper facilities and were landlocked allowing no room for growth. Westbury assured the audience at that time that new attendance zones would be drawn to ensure that the schools’ racial percentages would fall within 15 percent of the county’s overall racial percentages.

Charley told The T&D following that meeting that he believed that the board’s real motive was to further segregate the schools.

“We need to be unifying; not having a school on one end of the county for whites and on the other end for blacks,” said Charley who asserted that he suggested to the board last year, while they were discussing the construction of a new K-8 school, to consider building it halfway between Sandy Run and St. Matthews on highway 176 where all children could go to school together.

The board’s decision to change the location of the new school site from a Beacon Light Road site to the property across from Calhoun County High School in St. Matthews makes no difference to the Concerned Citizens because they firmly feel that pushing forward with the new construction is unnecessary.

At a Calhoun County School Board meeting last month, Charley threatened a boycott of the new school regardless of its location.

“It’s absurd to tear down a school that they spent $3 million on a few years ago just to build a new school. The location is not the issue. They just do not need a new school,” said Charley adding that when he was reading over the consent orders that the school board sent to the U.S. Department of Justice, he felt that the decision to build a school for the Sandy Run area was in violation of the desegregation order that the district has been under for the past 30 years.

“Our march here is to bring awareness to what’s going on in Calhoun County. People think the main issue is the school, but it goes deeper than that,” said Charley.

In a prayer with the group moments before setting out on the march, Pastor Charley said, “We want to make a change for the better. We want to level the playing field for all children everywhere. We know in our hearts that what we are doing is right.”

Attempts to reach Westbury on Saturday were unsuccessful.

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