Rosa Gill to lead school board

RALEIGH -- Rosa Gill's second sister in two weeks died Tuesday, and no one on the Wake County school board would have minded if she had wanted to delay her election as board chairwoman.

But with a full agenda Tuesday and plenty of work to come over the next few months, a grieving Gill told her colleagues to proceed with the board's business. It's part of the no-nonsense approach that her fellow school board members have come to expect of her.

"She told us to go forward," said school board member Susan Parry. "She didn't want us to hold things up because of her."

In her absence Tuesday, Gill was unanimously elected to be the new chairwoman of the school board. Beverley Clark was unanimously elected vice chairwoman.

Gill replaces Patti Head, who decided not to seek a third one-year term as chairwoman in order to spend more time with her family.

"I respect her greatly," Head said. "I believe she will bring a lot of gifts, a lot of talents and a dedication and commitment to the children of Wake County."

Gill, 63, a retired teacher and former state Department of Transportation administrator, becomes the first African-American head of the school board in 30 years. She's the lone black on the nine-member board.

Gill will lead a board that is facing a challenging period. Wake is experiencing record growth that could bring 8,000 new students this fall. The school district is still reeling over the controversy and legal fight over its plan to convert 22 schools to a year-round calendar next month.

To help with the growth, Gill said, one thing she wants to accomplish is to improve communications with elected officials in the towns and cities by holding regular meetings with them.

Potential for fireworks

Gill also will have to deal with the strained relations between the school board and the county commissioners. Both sides have quarreled over the past six months over year-round schools and funding.

Gill will lead the school board for a full year if she wins re-election in October in District 4, which covers much of Southeast Raleigh and a small portion of northeast Raleigh. Gill says she intends to run again, and no challengers have announced their candidacy.

Gill says she won't stand for things such as the recent dressing-down that Tony Gurley, chairman of the board of commissioners, gave the school board at last month's joint meeting.

"I don't know I'll take too much lecturing," Gill said in an interview last week. "We're all elected officials. We know our responsibilities."

Gurley is already warning that he expects relations to get worse now that Gill and Clark are leading the school board. Both boards will hold a joint meeting this morning.

"You think communications between the board of commissioners and the school board have been bad, you just wait. ..." Gurley said Tuesday. "I expect communications to be more difficult than when Patti Head was the chair. With Patti Head, we could always keep the lines of communications open, even when we disagreed. I don't expect that will be the case now."

Career in the Triangle

Gill grew up on a 21-acre tenant farm outside Apex. The next-to-youngest of 13 children, she entered Shaw University at 16. She got her first taste of politics at Shaw, where she began her lifelong association with the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, a Southeast Raleigh community group, helping out in voter registration drives.

She has also been a chairwoman of the Wake County Democratic Party and the Wake County Board of Elections.

She unsuccessfully ran for county commissioner in 1984 and unsuccessfully applied to fill a vacancy on the school board in 1985. She decided to try for elected office again in 1999 and won a seat on the school board.