ROME — “There’s a storm coming and we all need to get in front of it,” Rome branch NAACP President Jacqueline Nelson told the Rome City School District Board of Education and their audience Monday at their regular meeting.

Nelson implored the board to renew its Memorandum of Understanding with the NAACP.

“Let’s renew it and continue to work toward making every family, every child, every teacher feel respected, heard and valued,” she told the board.

Nelson recalled back to the December board meeting visit from ACCESS Global Group Founder and President/CEO Shanelle Benson Reid. Nelson said Reid’s report told of a classroom visit where a teacher was heard reading a book to the students that included three instances of the n-word, but without the teacher stopping to explain the negativity of that word.

That was a potential teaching moment that was now lost, Nelson said.

She asked how many of the board members have attended the new AREA Community Conversations, an acronym for the goal of those meetings to build “Authentic Relationships, which will ultimately lead to Equity for All.” Those meetings are a time to discuss problems and work together on solutions, Nelson said.

Nelson applauded the “Woven Together” exhibit for students and the public over the following two days at Strough Middle School in the district.

“It is so refreshing to be celebrating diversity in a school in the city of Rome for the whole community to come and see,” Nelson said.

The exhibit celebrated Black History Month and showcased the ways Black Americans have impacted the culture of the United States over the years. A video of NAACP history was a part of the exhibit and NAACP members were on hand to meet the attendees. A highlight was a nearly life-size recreation of the famous bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger back on Dec. 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.

At the end of the meeting, the board did indeed pass - unanimously - that Memorandum of Understanding as Nelson had hoped.

She applauded Blake for his accessibility during her presentation.

“He is the first superintendent who has opened his doors for the NAACP and partnered with us,” Nelson complimented.