By By GREG KATSKI
Community Editor
By all accounts, the Beaufort County Board of Education’s first meeting under the watch of new Beaufort County Schools Superintendent Don Phipps on Monday evening went well.
“It’s an opportunity to see everyone pull together,” Phipps said during a break during the meeting.
With his first meeting with the board behind him, Phipps said he’s excited to get out in the field.
“I look forward to getting out in the schools and seeing the people I represent on a daily basis,” he said.
During the meeting, the board allocated $38,000 to purchase new furniture for John Cotten Tayloe Elementary School’s new media center.
Robert Belcher, board chairman and a former principal of the school, said the new media center has been almost 20 years in the making.
“They’ve been waiting a long time,” he said.
Belcher said the school requested a new media center in his first year as principal in 1990.
“They’ve requested a media center every year since then. And golly, gee, after 20 years, they’ve got one,” he said.
Belcher said the funds allocated to purchase new furniture will go a long way in filling out the center.
“The furniture was just ancient,” he said.
In other business, Shanell Byrd, a senior at Washington High School, was recognized for her award-winning essay, “Benjamin Carson, M.D.”
Byrd was the North Carolina winner in Dominion Resource Services’ Strong Men and Women: Excellence in Leadership writing contest.
Five high school students, including one in North Carolina and four in Virginia, are honored annually by Dominion, a Richmond, Va.-based company, for excellence in writing about leadership and outstanding African-Americans.
Byrd was honored at Dominion’s 20th-annual Strong Men and Women: Excellence in Leadership celebration at the Richmond Marriott Hotel on Thursday.
In her essay, Byrd wrote about how Carson’s autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” changed her life.
“I was inspired by it because I could relate to much of what he went through in his life,” Byrd wrote in her essay. “When Carson was eight, his father abandoned his family, leaving Carson devastated by his absence. … Because I was abandoned by both parents at the age of two, I understood his resentfulness and confusion. Carson’s story gave me strength and understanding to know that even though I was abandoned, I could still succeed by appreciating the love that I had from my aunt and older sister.”
Byrd received a commemorative plaque and a Dell laptop computer for her award-winning piece.