North Carolina Private Education Administrator Retires After 25 Years

When Rod Helder became the second director of the state’s Division of Non-Public Education in 1985, he inherited a small staff and a unique arrangement for state regulation of private schools. Under the previous director, the state’s confrontational attitude toward private education had boiled over into civil disobedience by church schools and a class action lawsuit by the state. As thousands of parents rallied quietly in the streets of Raleigh, the General Assembly rewrote the private school law, and in the end, totally separated DNPE — and private education — from any public school oversight.

Now North Carolina boasts a healthy private school community and one of the largest concentrations of homeschoolers in the country. The possible savings in public school funding alone have been estimated at more than $1.3 billion per year.

“Rod Helder has been a tremendous choice for the state of North Carolina in that position,” said one Christian school leader.

With Helder’s retirement July 1, private education advocates face new uncertainties about the state’s regulatory approach to nonpublic schooling.

Explosive growth

Helder was an administrator with Alamance Christian Academy in Graham when he was chosen to run DNPE. He was selected at the urging of the Christian school community.

“He was a person we were able to personally pick for that position,” says Dwight Creech, principal of Calvary Christian School in Southern Pines. Creech has served CCS for nearly 38 years and sits on the board of the N.C. Christian Schools Association. He said Helder’s appointment helped heal the suspicions and conflicts that remained between the government and church-sponsored schools.

“There was a lot of misunderstanding in the state about Christian schools, and some inconsistencies in the application of the law,” he said. “It gave us more liberty to have a voice representing us at that time.”

At the time of his appointment, about 5 percent of North Carolina students attended private schools. However, 24 counties had fewer than 25 children in private schools, 11 counties had none at all, and the only homeschoolers were undocumented and secretive. State law did not recognize home education as a legal alternative until the N.C. Supreme Court’s 1985 ruling in Delconte v. North Carolina.

Since then, the percentage of North Carolina students in private education has exploded from 5.1 percent to 10.6 percent, with much of the growth coming from homeschoolers. In 2008-09, DNPE reports, there were 98,545 private school students and 77,065 being taught at home.

North Carolina’s homeschool law, passed in 1988 as an amendment to the nonpublic education statute, treats home schools as a special category of private school. While both enjoy the freedom to choose their curriculum and teaching methods, home schools are subject to more frequent standardized testing and many of the same paperwork requirements as conventional private schools.

Even with the growth, Helder’s office had only five staff members in 2006. This meant a constant search for more efficient ways to handle inquiries, filings, and other administrative duties, allowing the staff to budget travel time for visiting conventional schools. Inspections of homeschool records were conducted by mail or in group meetings, frequent phone questions ended up on the DNPE website, and recently the required “Notice of Intent” filing to open a private or home school was changed to an online form.

Homeschoolers proved sensitive to any state action that infringed on their independence, though. Spencer Mason, president of North Carolinians for Home Education, said his organization butted heads with Helder over some issues, such as his interpretation of the law with respect to tutors and outside classes. For years, DNPE did not allow homeschoolers to receive any instruction from tutors or take any courses in a formal classroom setting (for example, at a community college). However, the agency’s official stance was streamlined in 2007, and Helder often spoke in defense of home education to legislators and other officials. Portions of the homeschool statute are based on Helder’s proposals, said Mason.

“He was always very genial, a true Southern gentleman, and favorable toward homeschoolers,” Mason said. “We always had a very good relationship with him.”

NCCSA’s Creech valued Helder’s ties with the struggle that secured private schools’ freedom.

“You’ve got a lot of people in positions of influence and authority who are much younger and have no knowledge or recollection of issues years ago, and how we ended up in a class action lawsuit,” said Creech. “It was so many years ago, a lot of people have lost touch with how important the Christian school bill was, and how serious the issue is.”

One controversial change at DNPE was a formalized policy for complaints against homeschoolers. The new policy requires informants to file suspicions in writing with their signatures. Helder had found that most complaints to his office were coming from estranged spouses seeking to use homeschooling as a weapon against the custodial parent. Removing the cloak of anonymity reduced the temptation to exploit the agency to harass home educating families, and it greatly reduced staff time on the phone. Concerns about true criminality and abuse, Helder reasoned, could and should be reported through proper law enforcement channels.

Changes ahead?

On June 17 the Department of Administration announced the appointment of Dr. Chená Flood as Helder’s successor. Flood has a very different background than the former Christian school leader, starting her career as a teacher in Halifax County public schools and a curriculum specialist in Weldon city schools. Most recently, she headed the University-Schools Partnership Program at N.C. Central University’s School of Education. She is a member of the board of Union Independent School in Durham, a private K-8 academy which has applied to become a charter school next year. [See editor’s note.]

Linda Nelson, the executive director of the N.C. Association of Independent Schools, said she loos forward to meeting Flood and sharing the concerns of nonpublic schools.

“Frankly, we were spoiled by Rod Helder,” she said. “He was always helpful and very responsive, which is not always the case with government officials.”

Repeated attempts by Carolina Journal to contact Flood have been turned away by the Department of Administration, including e-mail sent to her NCCU address two weeks before her first day at DNPE.

Hal Young is a contributor to Carolina Journal.

[Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to clarify Chená Flood’s position in the Halifax County schools.]