GRADUATES WANT NEW LIFE FOR OLD SCHOOL
Demolition plans prompt campaign to save Carver High buildings in Delray
Graduates of Carver High School, the segregated Delray Beach public school that closed in 1970, are banding together to save the campus they say merits preservation for its links to the city’s African-American history.
The Palm Beach County School District had planned to raze the site at 301 SW 14th Ave., now called the Delray Full Service Center, because of the decrepit condition of its buildings, including leaky pipes and collapsing roofs. Officials budgeted $10 million, with money coming from the 1-cent sales tax voters approved in 2016.
Some graduates heard
about the demolition plan and in recent months have created the Carver High School Historic Preservation Society, which is working to save two buildings on the campus and raise money to help the district maintain the site.
“There was a collective gasp at our reunion in September when we heard they were about to demolish the campus,” said Paula Newman-Rocker, 70, a society co-founder who graduated in 1966. “We decided we had to do something.”
The graduates brainstormed a plan to save the site’s two oldest buildings, build athletics facilities for nearby Village Academy and create a residential development on part of the property. They say the housing would bring in property tax revenue that would contribute to the district’s budget for the site.
Wanda Paul, the school district’s facilities management chief, said the proposal was one of many offered by neighborhood residents. She said preserving the buildings will add to the price of the project.
“At the end of the day, we have $10 million and there’s not a lot we can do,” she said.
Graduates say the school deserves to be saved because it was a center of community activity in pre-integration times and the pride of the city’s African-American community.
Among the school’s most well-known leaders was Solomon Spady, who worked as principal and teacher. Spady taught in Delray Beach for 35 years and is credited with greatly expanding educational opportunities for his students, including teaching them wood shop, agriculture, drama and sports. An elementary school is named for him, and the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum is on the site of his home.
In 1958, Carver moved to its current site with Spady as principal. But the school closed in 1970, when the city merged its white school, Seacrest High, with Carver to create Atlantic Community High School.
A 1994 city proclamation says the school produced two state championship football teams and 12 winning track teams. Carver was also the first black school in Florida to host a track meet, in 1947.
Carver was “the last bastion of legal segregation” in Delray Beach, said Spady museum director Charlene Jones, whose mother, Vera Farrington, graduated from the school in 1947. “People who attended in that time period have tremendous memories of relationships in the community.”
School district officials have met three times with neighborhood residents and graduates and likely will meet at least one more time, School Board member Debra Robinson said. She said the district wants to continue Delray Full Service’s adult education programs and also offer vocational programs, such as automotive or culinary training, with room for the community to rent classroom space for social programs.
“I want the best use of that $10 million and the best long term uses for the neighborhood,” she said.