Lincoln Middle wants to chart its own course. Will the district give its OK?

Gwen McElroy has occupied a seat in the front office of Lincoln Memorial Middle School in Palmetto for 48 years.

The 66-year-old has seen the school evolve from the all-black Lincoln Memorial High School, where she worked in the office as a high school junior and senior until she graduated in 1969, to the integrated Lincoln Memorial Middle School, where she has worked as a secretary since 1971.

She has seen a lot of change from the chair where she now mentors the great-grandchildren of some of her classmates.

And she is excited about one more: the potential conversion of Lincoln Middle from a traditional public school in the School District of Manatee County to a charter school.

“If you expose me to something different, I don’t want to do what I’ve always done,” McElroy said.

The school’s teachers and parents voted in March to begin the conversion to a charter school. On Wednesday, school leaders had their interview with school district officials, and Superintendent Diana Greene will make her recommendation to the School Board of Manatee County. School principal Eddie Hundley said he expected a recommendation and vote at the board’s Aug. 22 meeting.

Hundley said the conversion is necessary so the school has the autonomy to develop programs that officials say will best serve the middle school children in Palmetto.

“We understand (district-wide) policies are made for the greater good of the majority of the kids,” Hundley said. “But when you have an outlier like we are, they have to do something different.”

Hundley said the Lincoln charter planned to add an extra hour of school to the day for the “CALM” hour. CALM stands for College & Career preparation, Arts & Athletics, Leadership and Municipalities. He said the extra hour currently was not possible due to needing to follow the district’s bus schedule and funding limitations. He also said district policies required keeping huge chunks of the student body in remedial classes, and he said he did not have the manpower to staff the number of remedial classes he would need.

“We average about 70 percent incoming sixth-graders below grade level. The downside of that is (due to remediation) they often miss out on these extracurriculars,” Hundley said. “You can’t foster a love for something you haven’t been exposed to.”

Hundley and his staff are excited about the prospect of exposing Lincoln students to career, athletic and collegiate opportunities. He said students, some of whom have never left Palmetto, will take field trips to the University of Florida and out-of-state colleges to learn about what it would require to move on to higher education after high school.

Physical education teacher Kamille Bratton said she was looking forward to a different approach than the curriculum she currently uses. She said, if the conversion goes through, physical education will focus more on sport-specific skill development.

“Now it is structured in a way where you have a lot of games,” Bratton said. “We don’t really focus on the little things that help them to improve in that sport.”

If the charter conversion goes through, it will be the next step for a school that has survived a variety of phases, but has always been a hub for the black community in Manatee County.

In 1945, the School Board of Manatee County opened Lincoln Memorial as the only high school for black students in the county. It remained segregated until 1969 — 15 years after Brown vs. Board of Education — when the last all-black class graduated.

Alumni include Ray Bellamy, who in 1966 became the first black athlete to receive a football scholarship with a major university in the South when he signed to play for the University of Miami.

Hundley said the school’s history had fostered a spirit of self reliance, and that, if allowed to chart its own course, the school could thrive.

“They mostly did well when they were required to take care of themselves,” Hundley said. “And in essence, in becoming a charter, we are somewhat doing that again.”

This story was originally published July 21, 2017 at 10:34 AM with the headline "Lincoln Middle wants to chart its own course. Will the district give its OK?."