SR_DPI_DNE_Special_Subject_File_B1F15_Equalization_Education_Opportunities_042

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followed by the practice we adopt in other fields where State funds are expanded,
it would seem that these children, coming largely from our less fortunate groups,
should be given additional advantages in order to compensate for the poorer
start they have had in life.

Another field in which we have been highly neglectful is the field of Vocational
Education. Since North Carolina, like most Southern States, is largely rural,
would it not seem that these children of teh farms should receive special training
in Agricultural and Home Economics? Long strides have been taken in this
direction in recent years, but there is still much to be desired in this line.

About twenty-five years ago, our forward-looking State Government began a
program of consolidation of white rural schools. This program, with adequate bus
transportation, has now become an accomplished fact in most of out counties.
However, the consolidation of the Negro schools, on a state-wide basis, has never
been attempted.

On December 9, 1943, our Governor made an appeal to the State Board of Education
on behalf of the consolifation of teh rural Negro schools. Since there are at
the present time in our State 1,398 one-, two-, and three-teacher Negro schools,
this program is one of great magnitude. As a result of this statement on the
part of Governor Broughton, the State Board of Education has appointed a committee
of five of its members to work with the State Department of Public
Instruction in making a thorough study of the existing situation and to report
its findings in time for a complete program for the elimination of these small
schools at the close of the War when building can be resumed. Naturally, this
program would automatically include adequate bus transportation. This far-
reaching step will do more than any one particular thing to achieve the equality
between Negro and White Schools than any one so far attempted.