CHAPEL HILL -- The NAACP and the International Ministerial Alliance say black students in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School System are being treated unfairly in the school system and they want to know why. Parents and community leaders now say it’s time to take action.

"[We’re] trying to get action so we can have the same opportunity for education as any other students in the school system,” said Fred Battle, of the Chapel-Hill-Carrboro NAACP.

In a community meeting held Monday, parents voiced their concerns about the annual yearly report card scores and the black students’ lackluster performance. The state issued grades for the city school system show that 93 percent of white elementary school students passed both reading and math End of Grade tests. For their black peers, the numbers were 44 percent.

At the high school level, 95 percent of white students passed the course-ending tests, while only about half of black students passed the same tests.

"We just have to pull up our straps and keep working and close the achievement gap again," said Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools superintendent Neil Pedersen.

Black leaders feel this poor performance falls on one thing -- children who can't relate with whose teaching them.

"We have over 1,000 teachers and only 160 are African-American and those are some of the disparities that we're dealing with," Eugene Farror, of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, said.

Pederson said one of the school system’s goals is to increase the proportion of black teachers.”

“We actually recruit from historically black universities, and actually our African-American teachers do reflect the percentage of African-American students in our district," he said.

Faith-based churches in the area have plans to open a resource center where students can be mentored and tutored.