The optimist in us wants to believe that right, eventually, will prevail. For a day last week, that desire proved true.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Haywood County commissioners voted unanimously to purchase the old Pigeon Street School from the school board for $300,000. The county is going to let the neighborhood community club lease the building and turn it into a community center. It seems the old school will once again become the heart of the African-American community in Haywood County.

The road to establishing a center for the youth, senior citizens and everyone else in the nearby community was a tortuous one. Looking closely backward at that rocky path, however, can provide some interesting insights:

° First and foremost, state law needs to be changed. Haywood County taxpayers built the school in 1956. However, North Carolina law says that when a school is declared surplus by the public school system, it does not simply revert back to the county’s possession. The school board must be compensated at market value. In effect, this means that taxpayers must pay the school board for the property, meaning taxpayers have to pay for the building twice.

Once a school is closed, the greater community should be able to determine how it will be used. Let educators educate school children, and let duly elected county commissioners use these buildings to help the communities in which they are located. The county should get possession of closed schools without having to pay for them a second time.

° The ongoing antagonism between the school and county board in Haywood is not good for anyone, especially students and citizens. The standoff over the school was all about $25,000. Being frugal with tax money is one thing, but that is not a whole lot of money for these government entities, and it certainly seemed as if there was little importance assigned to this matter by the majority on both boards. Though the resolution of this deal is now going to benefit this community, it came too close to never happening.

° The town of Waynesville’s offer to step up and contribute the $25,000 that had become the main sticking point was completely ignored. It was a generous gesture that ended up being unnecessary, but if the deal had never been completed it would been the difference between success and failure.

° Did anyone notice that life went on as usual at the courthouse on MLK Jr. Day, the day commissioners voted to buy the school? The state holiday is ignored by too many local governments, a symbol, perhaps, of why this deal was so hard to consummate.

The Pigeon community is the rightful heir to that old school, and now they will write the history of how it came to serve the community once again. What is right has happened.