During the final minutes of the Cumberland County Board of Education meeting on April 14, Fathom Geerts, a 17-year-old junior at Alger B. Wilkins High School, stepped to the podium wearing a school T-shirt and holding a printed speech in her hands.
She spoke carefully, pausing at times, about how Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neurological disorder that affects peripheral nerves and causes muscle weakness, shapes her daily experience at school. She described how walking is painful, how crowded hallways can be dangerous, and how something as simple as carrying books from class to class is not simple for her at all.
Geerts addressed the board as it moves forward with a consolidation and construction plan approved April 2 that repurposes the Alger B. Wilkins campus. The plan shifts students and programs out of the school for the 2026-27 school year and later uses the site as temporary space for other schools before closing it and turning the building over to the county…