But the elephant was in the room, as Donna Hunter, chair of the Halifax County Board of Education, said and the six-letter word — merger — was discussed near the end.

While the groups agreed to meet again in two to three months to discuss the nearly year-old Evergreen Solutions study —officially called Operational Improvements in Halifax County School Districts — and recommendations made during the joint session, Hunter said the one thing that wasn't discussed was consolidation. “That's the big elephant in the room … It's not going away.”

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Roanoke Rapids Graded Schools Superintendent Dennis Sawyer said some of the recommendations made during the meeting as officials sat in different discussion groups for about an hour, included collaborating among the three school systems, “Working to make the school systems better.”

One of the recommendations in the Evergreen report, he said, discussed teacher supplements. “We're in Northeastern North Carolina. It's a hard place to recruit teachers. There are 36 bullet points. Some are viable some are not.”

Patrick Qualls, who serves on the Roanoke Rapids board of education, said the meeting was not about consolidation, but to improve education for all children. “If we come back to talk about consolidation there's no need to come back. We have a statement about consolidation (with Weldon City Schools) and that hasn't changed.”

Mike Williams, who also serves on the Roanoke Rapids board, said, overall, the meeting was, “tremendously productive.”

He said, however, with the joint statement with Weldon and a failed vote by county commissioners, “I have no interest in wasting time on a non-productive (issue).”

James Pierce, chairman of the county commissioners, said, “Our board took a vote on the consolidation issue. For the board as it sits, we're definitely not going to devise a plan to consolidate schools. Our intent is to make education better.”

Susie Lynch-Evans, a county board of education member, said it was a shame the panelists would not discuss the issue. She said children in the rural parts of the county have never experienced going to school with students of different race.

Commissioner Rives Manning told Evans it would take a 21-cent tax increase to fund merger, a fact Pierce disputed.

As the merger debate continued, Carolyn Hawkins, also on the county school board, said it appeared to her the meeting was about holding on to old values when it should be about developing new values.

Qualls replied that his group discussed bettering education, not hurling slings and arrows on the merger issue.