PRINCETON -- More than four decades have past since the last all-black classes left Princeton Graded School, but the campus could soon be a place where needy kids get a leg up.
Taking Education Skills Seriously, a Mount Olive-based nonprofit, bought the building two years ago. Recently, TESS won its first grant to turn the building into a community center that will also offer tutoring.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is giving $40,000 through its program to save historic black schools.
"We think that, because of this grant, we are now eligible for so many other things," TESS director Kaye Brimmage said.
Other grant awarders had told TESS to call once it had seed money.
Brimmage estimates the renovations will cost $495,000, and TESS has ambitious plans for what the seven-room schoolhouse will become.
It will serve chiefly as the group's headquarters and as classroom space for TESS' flagship program for disadvantaged students.
Since it started in 2007, TESS has identified students in Johnston and Wayne counties who make good grades under hard circumstances.
It gives them extra help with their studies and offers a $1,000 college scholarship for each year the child makes all A's and B's.
But the old Princeton school has more space than the program needs. Brimmage says TESS plans to offer a variety of after-school programs to all interested students, from science to global studies to technology.
Brimmage also wants to put in a computer lab with distance-learning capabilities. And she wants to offer basic-education classes for adults and host cultural programs and community events in the school's 100-seat auditorium.
A library is also a possibility.
"This is going to be a full-service community center," Brimmage said.
Major work needed
Few improvements have been made to the school building since it closed to students in 1968, so a lot of repair work is needed to make Brimmage's vision a reality.
The National Trust grant requires its money to be spent within a year, so by this time next year, TESS expects to finish the improvements needed to make the building usable.
Plans for renovation
Recently, architecture students from N.C. State University have been on the site along with the Rural Initiatives Project Inc., which has done similar restorations. They're drawing up plans to restore the building to its original grandeur.
That will mean tearing out most of the most-modern room in the building, which was dry-walled to house a day care center.
The goal is for school to look like it did in the years it was open.
Aside from some water damage in the front offices and entryway, the school is largely in good condition. "The building is in remarkable condition," said Tracy Hayes, a spokeswoman for the National Trust. She added that many other black schools from the period are in major disrepair, and eight of Johnston County's original 10 are no longer standing.
The same can't be said for a 1950s addition to the Princeton school.
The roof is missing from much of the building - Brimmage thinks a tornado was responsible - and what's left is quickly deteriorating.
Still though, TESS would like for the 1950s building to be restored eventually to house a business center for Research Triangle Park firms that could help with mentoring programs. "As soon as we can, we're going to get the preservationists in and stop the decay," Brimmage said.
Building full of history
The Princeton Graded School was built in 1925 to serve black children in eastern Johnston County. It was one of hundreds of such schools built with funding from Sears owner Julius Rosenwald.
The Rosenwald Schools project also got a hand from Booker T. Washington, and the local black community chipped in as well.
The National Trust grant is part of the group's efforts to save the remaining schools and their history.
Hayes, the group's spokesman, said the Rosenwald school campaign "developed into a huge, never-before-seen educational effort to provide quality public school education to African-American students across the South."
After integration, the Johnston County school board closed Princeton in 1968 and sold it at auction to an alumnus, Eula Powell Kyle, who was determined to save the building and make it a cultural arts center.
Kyle and her daughter, Elaine Mabson, owned the building until TESS bought it in 2008.
Brimmage said TESS plans to set aside one classroom as a history room. "Hopefully we will put Rosenwald Schools on the tourism map for North Carolina," she said.
