RILEY HILL, N.C. – After Riley Hill Elementary School burned down in September 2020, community members want to know what's next.

The Rosenwald School was built in 1927 and was where Black people in the area got their education. Carolyn Jones Smith is a community member who went to the school in the 1960s. She says the building represents where a lot of people got their roots.

"The community developed from five slave brothers who built the Riley Hill community," says Smith. "The thickness is tight, and to see that down there, it was like losing your own house with all your belongings in it....and now that it's gone it's like we lost our identity as a community."

Riley Hill Baptist Church bought the school in 1991. It became a family life center until obsolete in the early 2000s.

More than a community landmark, the school has been on the National Register for Historic Places since April 2001.

"A lot of people say, 'it's just an old building, you need to tear it down'...well we got some doctors and lawyers out of this old building," says Smith.

While reporting on the story in February, a for sale sign sat out front of the property. Smith says she remembered it being there for over a year.

A deacon at Riley Hill Baptist Church, Nilous Hodge, says they have since taken the “for sale” sign down and that the school is no longer on the market. Hodge says the school is such a big part of their history that they want to keep it.

Hodge says the deacon board and trustees are figuring out how, and what, they need to do to restore the property.