Clarke Elementary School officially dedicated

Officials from the North Carolina Assembly, the Vance County Board of Commissioners, the Vance County Board of Education, and the city of Henderson turned out en masse for yesterday’s dedication of the new Clarke Elementary School located on Mt. Carmel Church Road in southern Vance County, North Carolina.

“Welcome to Clarke-with-an-E,” School board member Margaret Ellis said to the crowd of two hundred residents who turned out for the ceremony.

According to Ellis, school board member Gloria White discovered during research that the name “Clark” was originally spelled with an “e”, hence its re-adoption in the schools second incarnation.

School board member Ruth Hartness told the audience that the new school was on the drawing board 25 years ago. Ellis continued in the same vein later in the ceremony when she said that when she was first elected to the school board in 1990 there was talk of closing the original Clark Street Elementary School which was scrapped because there was no place to put its 300 students.

Vance County Board of Commissioners Chair Danny Wright called education “the cornerstone of democracy” in his remarks during the dedication ceremony. He also mentioned that the school can accommodate 700 students, thus planning for future growth.

The school is also energy-efficient, well-situated for the eventual construction of a new middle school, was built on-time and under-budget, according to Wright.

Wright also noted that it was constructed without additional county taxes on Vance County residents.

Near the end of the ceremony, North Carolina Senator Doug Berger and North Carolina Representative Michael Wray presented Clarke Elementary principal John Hargrove with a state flag that flew over the capital on September 8, 2010.

Vance County Schools Superintendent Norman Shearin offered the final remarks of the evening, telling the crowd that “when you work together and work hard, you can do anything.”

“We’re doing an awful lot for kids,” Shearin said. “This school really paints that picture.”